Quotes by British Authors - Page 419

Travelling allows you to see the world as it is.And that's beautiful.
Anthony T.Hincks
..the happy hum of humanity.
Arthur C. Clarke
Astrid had gone to look at the burn zone. Doing the right thing.Kids had yelled at her. Demanded to know why she had let it happen. Demanded to know where Sam was. Deluged her with complaints and worries and crazy theories until she had retreated.She’d hidden out after that. She’d refused to answer the door when kids knocked. She had not gone to her office. It would be the same there.But through the day it had eaten at her. This feeling of uselessness. A feeling of uselessness made so much worse by the growing realization that she needed Sam. Not because they were up against some threat. The threat was mostly past now.She needed Sam because no one had any respect for her. There was only one person right now who could get a crowd of anxious kids to settle down and do what needed to be done.She had wanted to believe that she could do that. But she had tried. And they hadn’t listened.But Sam was still nowhere to be seen. So despite everything it was still on her shoulders. The thought of it made her sick. It made her want to scream.
Michael Grant
Perhaps our dreams are there to be broken, and our plans are there to crumble, and our tomorrows are there to dissolve into todays, and perhaps all of this is all a giant invitation to wake up from the dream of separation, to awaken from the mirage of control, and embrace whole-heartedly what is present. Perhaps it is all a call to compassion, to a deep embrace of this universe in all its bliss and pain and bitter-sweet glory. Perhaps we were never really in control of our lives, and perhaps we are constantly invited to remember this, since we constantly forget it. Perhaps suffering is not the enemy at all, and at its core, there is a first-hand, real-time lesson we must all learn, if we are to be truly human, and truly divine. Perhaps breakdown always contains breakthrough. Perhaps suffering is simply a right of passage, not a test or a punishment, nor a signpost to something in the future or past, but a direct pointer to the mystery of existence itself, here and now. Perhaps life cannot go 'wrong' at all.
Jeff Foster
When I was an undergraduate we were told that history had ended, and we all believed it. When the Berlin Wall fell, what history was made of was over. No more Cold War. No more wars. And yet here it was, and is and all of it falling apart. Endings. Worlds dissolving. Weather systems, baking systems, the careful plans of municipal gardeners. Families, hearts, lives.
Helen Macdonald
...lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, work round to the same.
Charles Dickens
Saying of the ProphetMonkishnessNo monkery in Islam.
Idries Shah
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
C.S. Lewis
If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together" African Proverb
Paul Oberschneider
drowning in a sea of logicthis monstrous state of palsy
Sarah Kane
Boldly they rode and well,Into the jaws of Death,Into the mouth of hell.
Alfred Tennyson
The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.
C.S. Lewis
Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?O'Brien: Of course he exists.Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?O'Brien: You do not exist.
George Orwell
Living your life on your own terms is utterly glorious. It makes perfect sense to you, but you have to be willing to let go of everything else. It has to be okay if nobody else likes that, but then when other people see that you are brave, you don’t mind. They’re fascinated by that because we all love brave people. We all love it when people are heroic.
Melinda Gebbie
And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.
Jane Austen
Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are.
G.K. Chesterton
The door', replied Maimie, 'will always, always be open, and mother will always be waiting at it for me.
J.M. Barrie
The majority of boys think the highest form of creativity is weeing a pattern into snow.
Beth Garrod
She would have given up every Gathering from now until she went to join StarClan, if only she could have been sure that her sister was safe.
Erin Hunter
All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.
Alan Moore
In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.
Tahir Shah
No valentines from the cats again.
Lynne Truss
If I should die think only this of me that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
Rupert Brooke
A professional man of letters, especially if he is much at war with unscrupulous enenemies, is naturally jealous of his privacy... so it was, I think, with Dryden.
Walter Raleigh
It’s well to have such a comfortable assurance regarding the worth of those we love. I only wish you may not find your confidence misplaced.
Anne Brontë
It was so cold. In the monastery. Sometimes the wind came from the sea with ice in it... It could freeze the skin off your face. Once the snow was so deep we couldn't get out of the doors to the woodshed. A monk jumped from a window. He sank into a drift and took a long time to get up. That night, they made me sleep next to the stove. I was small, thin, like a piece of birch bark. But then the Stove went out.Father Bernard took me into his cell... It was he who first gave me chalk and paper. He was so old his eyes his eyes looked as if he was crying. But he was never sad. In winter he had fewer blankets than the others. He said he didn't need them because God warmed him.(...)But even Father Bernard was cold that night. He laid me down on the bed next to him, wrapped me in an animal skin, then in his own arms. He told me stories about Jesus. How His love could wake the dead and how with Him in one's heart one could heat the world... When I woke it was light. The snow had stopped. I was warm. But he was cold. I gave him the skin but his body was stiff. I didn't know what to do. I got out a piece of paper from his chest under the bed and drew him, lying there. His face had a smile on it. I knew that God had been there when he died. That now He was in me, and because of Father Bernard I would be warm forever.
Sarah Dunant
Make that cage golden, it’s still a fucking cage.”“Wel , in the absence of other options, gold will have to do.
Aleksandr Voinov
There's a kind of release And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man.
C. Day Lewis
Time is precious but truth is more precious than time.
Benjamin Disraeli
Sometimes the fastest way down is to jump off a cliff.
Anthony T.Hincks
The cool touch of the rock soothed Waeccan. He felt its strengthflowing into him, trickling through his fingertips. The Shades wereon his side. They would bring back the peace he needed for hiswork. The intruder was just a man—nothing more. He would bedealt with. Everything would be as it was meant to be. Waeccanallowed himself a grim smile. How strange it was that he, whosename meant watcher, had become the one who was watched.
Mikey Campling
(...) perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.
Terry Pratchett
Like will to like each creature loves his kind.
Robert Herrick
My heart born nakedwas swaddled in lullabies.Later alone it worepoems for clothes.Like a shirtI carried on my backthe poetry I had read.So I lived for half a centuryuntil wordlessly we met.From my shirt on the back of the chairI learn tonighthow many yearsof learning by heartI waited for you.
John Berger
What a revolution in her ideas!
Jane Austen
My job is to know what other people do not know.
Arthur Conan Doyle
He willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else.
J.R.R. Tolkien
To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
Anthony Burgess
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
Aldous Huxley
Conversation is the sexiest foreplay, the perfect prelude to sex, the fiery banter that gets you heated, the stimulation of the mind that transmits to the body. Conversation is a give and take. Just like sex itself. And the best give and takes — the best conversations — lead to the best sex.
Zara Barrie
We dare not talk of the darkness for fear it will infect us.We dare not talk of the fire, for fear it will destroy us.And so we live in the half-light, Like our mothers before us.Come to the fire, Feel it warm your skin.Come to the fire,Feel it burn in your belly,Shine out through your eyes.Come dance in the fire, Let it fuel your prayers.
Lucy H. Pearce
I did not intend making a philippic against covetousness, a sin to which I believe no one here is addicted. Let us not, however, plume ourselves in not being guilty of a vice to which, as we have no natural bias so in not committing it, we resist no temptation. What I meant to insist on was, that exchanging a turbulent for a quiet sin, or a scandalous for an orderly one, is not reformation.
Hannah More
Psychotherapy and counselling should make people aware of themselves and of the difficulties which they face. This then gives them the freedom to choose for themselves. In this sense, unlike behaviour therapy, psychotherapy is value-free: no advice, suggestions or recriminations are given. Indeed the only value of psychotherapy is respect for the individual. Such respect, however, in a mechanistic and objectifying society ... becomes a political act.
Paul Kline
[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world.
Alain de Botton
...if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.
James Hutton
Sure, swing your oscillating dick over there, and see how long you last before she runs screaming for the authorities.
J.A. Belfield
As their figures recede, it strikes Filsan as ironic that they had delayed fleeing so they could take as many of their possessions as possible, but now those very possessions prevent their flight.
Nadifa Mohamed
In the past, changing the self and changing the world were often regarded as separate endeavors and viewed in either-or terms. But in the story of the Great Turning, they are recognized as mutually reinforcing and essential to one another.
Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
Much depends on asking the right question at the right time.
Arthur Koestler
Moving the body resolves nothing- sadness, after all travels in the mind.
Shahrukh Husain
If you want to change something, whether in a relationship, work, or anywhere, identify and focus on the few most important bits, and don't throw in extras to mess it up.
Jay Woodman
Illness and death are not the only consequences of the lack of access to water; it also hinders education and economic development. Widespread illness makes countries less productive, more dependent on outside aid, and less able to lift themselves out of poverty. According to the United Nations, one of the main reasons girls do not go to school in sub-Saharan Africa is that they have to spend so much time fetching water from distant wells and carrying it home.
Tom Standage
God knew our lives would be really bad sometimes. Like maybe we'd be turned into a monster and then our best friend would get killed. So he made up this story about hell, so we could always say, 'Well it could be worse. It could be hell.' And then we'd keep going.
Michael Grant
If you do bad stuff and don't repent, you go to hell," Orc said, like he was begging for a refutation."Yeah, well, you know what? If Howard's in hell, I guess we can all have a big get-together soon enough. a
Michael Grant
The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?"
Neil Gaiman
No fiction is good fiction unless it is true to life, and yet no life is worth relating unless it be a life out of the ordinary; and then it seems improbable like fiction.
William Gerhardie
Happiness is achieving your goals. Contentment is not having any.
Chloe Thurlow
I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn't understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once.
Terry Pratchett
After a sharp inward struggle, he concluded to stay and see it out. He should despise himself, more than he cared to face, if he gave in now.
Thomas Hughes
The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.
Adam Phillips