Quotes by British Authors - Page 428

You will remember that Albertus Magnus, after describing minutely the process by which spirits may be invoked and commanded, adds emphatically that the process will instruct and avail only to the few - that a man must be born a magician! - that is, born with a peculiar physical temperament, as a man is born a poet. Rarely are men in whose constitution lurks this occult power of the highest order of intellect - usually in the intellect there is some twist, perversity, or disease.' ("The House And The Brain")
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.
Bruce Chatwin
Fundamental to a radical and lesbian feminist politics is the understanding that 'the personal is political'. This phrase has two interrelated meanings. It means that the political power structures of the 'public' world are reflected in the private world. Thus, for women in particular, the 'private' world of heterosexuality is not a realm of personal security, a haven from a heartless world, but an intimate realm in which their work is extracted and their bodies, sexuality and emotions are constrained and exploited for the benefits of individual men and the male supremacist political system. The very concept of 'privacy' as Catharine MacKinnon so cogently expresses it, 'has shielded the place of battery, marital rape, and women's exploited labor'. But the phrase has a complementary meaning, which is that the 'public' world of male power, the world of corporations, militaries and parliaments is founded upon this private subordination. The edifice of masculine power relations, from aggressive nuclear posturing to take-over bids, is constructed on the basis of its distinctiveness from the 'feminine' sphere and based upon the world of women which nurtures and services that male power. Transformation of the public world of masculine aggression, therefore, requires transformation of the relations that take place in 'private'. Public equality cannot derive from private slavery.
Sheila Jeffreys
We're on the brink of an Adventure. Don't spoil it by asking questions!
P.L. Travers
Nature has granted man no better gift than the shortness of life. The senses grow dull, the limbs are numb, sight, bearing, gait, even the teeth and alimentary organs die before we do, and yet this period is reckoned a portion of life." - Pg. 82
Robert Harris
Dye your hair, certainly. But what can you do for your face?
Idries Shah
She leaned out of the window slow and sleepy, and the light came through her nightdress like sand through a sieve.
Laurie Lee
Feeling your way to knowledge rather than thinking your way, often results in better learning.
Sam Owen
The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality.
James George Frazer
Ernie got it,' I said afterwards. 'His experience taught him that you've got to fight for what's right. It gets you into a lot of trouble but he came to the same conclusion as me.' People think it could never happen here. Don't you believe it; it doesn't take much.
Denis Avey
His (Samuel Coleridge) dark senses were constantly in play, the frustration of them bringing illness. Weather and organic nature combined in a synaesthetic multi-media event, and this was the ground of all perception before it was divded up in daily living: the Primary Imagination giving way to the Secondary. Poetry was forever seeking a conscious return to this state, which existed all the time, whether he knew it or not.
Peter Redgrove
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
Alain de Botton
It's dark because you're trying too hard," said Susila. "Dark because you want it to be light. Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl. 'Lightly, child, lightly. You've got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly, act lightly, feel lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.' I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly—it was the best advice ever given me. Well, now I'm going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi . . . Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely unencumbered.
Aldous Huxley
What do you fear, lady?" [Aragorn] asked. "A cage," [Éowyn] said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.
J.R.R. Tolkien
All who joy would winMust share it -- Happiness was born a twin.
George Gordon Byron
Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment.
Michel Faber
Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of ’94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.
Hilary Mantel
Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and many calculate what Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other.
Abraham de Moivre
[…] but she cannot make him eat, like you.
Warsan Shire
As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.
Joseph Conrad
Fear born of that stern matron Responsibility.
William McFee
Knowledge is of two kinds we know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it.
Samuel Johnson
My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.
Diane Setterfield
Never throw mud. You may miss your mark but you must have dirty hands.
Joseph Parker
But language is wine upon his lips
Virginia Woolf
A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.
Charlie Chaplin
If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life.
Arnold Bennett
Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Dante reserved a place in his Inferno for those who wilfully live in sadness - sullen in the sweet air, he says. Your 'honour' is all shame and timidity and compliance. Pure of stain! But the artist is the secret criminal in our midst. He is the agent of progress against authority. you are right to be a scholar. A scholar is all scruple, an artist is none. The artist must lie, cheat, deceive, be untrue to nature and contemptuous of history. I made my life into my art and it was an unqualified success. The blaze of my immolation threw its light into every corner of the land where uncounted young men sat each in his own darkness. What would I have done in Megara!? - think what I would have missed! I awoke the imagination of the century. I banged Ruskin's and Pater's heads together, and from the moral severity of one and the aesthetic soul of the other I made art a philosophy that can look the twentieth century in the eye. I had genius, brilliancy, daring, I took charge of my own myth. I dipped my staff into the comb of wild honey. I tasted forbidden sweetness and drank the stolen waters. I lived at the turning point of the world where everything was waking up new - the New Drama, the New Novel, New Journalism, New Hedonism, New Paganism, even the New Woman. Where were you when all this was happening?
Tom Stoppard
Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.
George Eliot
Will I be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine?...Which girl’s carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intricate loops? What’s she doing right now? What’s her name?
David Mitchell
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
I could say how well he dances, but that isn't true, for he dances like that big friendly bear I saw last Christmas.
Winston Graham
Faith is a kind of betting or speculation.
Samuel Butler
..,When the call ended, Haley went back into the bedroom where Falon was lying in bed with an arm over her eyes. “That was Cindy, right?” Falon asked. “Yes, and my parents are driving her crazy. I have to call them. If you want a laugh, listen to my half of the conversation.” Haley climbed into the bed next to Falon and leaned her back against the headboard. She blew out a breath and pressed a button on her phone. “Hey, Dad, I’m… I am fine… yes, I can hear you both… Well, I’m sorry… I am fine,” Haley said forcefully. “No… no… I mean it, no. I’m a grown—late tonight. No… no… absolutely not. Neither of you drive at night—no. I said no. I’m fine… I am fine… no.” She grinned at Falon when she laughed softly. “I’m not alone… no. Another ship passenger—female. No… I know. I’m a grown woman! Yes, I realize that—no! Well, this is why…. no. Yes, but don’t show up before dawn. No. That doesn’t make any sense, no. This call is a dollar a minute… no. Yes, you can bring breakfast. Yes, I will do that—I just said I would do that. Yes… no. Yes. I love you, too, bye.” “That was exhausting,” Falon said with a laugh when Haley released a heavy breath and dropped her phone into her lap.
Robin Alexander
I think so muchmay be it never endswhen this night endsthere's another at handI sleep with oneand wake with onewith everything else onthis life goes on.
Jyoti Mishra
The thought of all that happiness was hard to bear. What's the point of happiness when all it does is throw the facts of dying into clear relief?
Sebastian Faulks
I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.
Graham Greene
No idea how you figured out the riddle, but you scooped the first prize. Congratulations. You've just won a vacation to a big, relaxing place called a grave.
Jayde Scott
Time like money is measured by our needs.
George Eliot
And I was a Child again, watching the bright World. But the Spell broke when at this Juncture some Gallants jumped from the Pitt onto the Stage and behaved as so many Merry-Andrews among the Actors, which reduced all to Confusion. I laugh'd with them also, for I like to make Merry among the Fallen and there is pleasure to be had in the Observation of the Deformity of Things. Thus when the Play resumed after the Disturbance, it was only to excite my Ridicule with its painted Fictions, wicked Hypocrisies and villainous Customs, all depicted with a little pert Jingle of Words and a rambling kind of Mirth to make the Insipidnesse and Sterility pass. There was no pleasure in seeing it, and nothing to burden the Memory after: like a voluntarie before a Lesson it was absolutely forgotten, nothing to be remembered or repeated.
Peter Ackroyd
The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane.
Robert Rowland Smith
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook?Sometimes it ought to be. Sometimes it is.
Doris Lessing
Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything.
Meg Rosoff
At the heart of good communication, is not the process of talking, but that of listening. The first step to improve your listening skills is to stop talking. It is very difficult to talk and listen at the same time.
Tony Buon
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.
Virginia Woolf
Done because we are too many.
Thomas Hardy
You have to watch them all the time,’ she assured me darkly. ‘Even if the spirit’s willing, the flesh is weak!
Trisha Ashley
Mentioning violence to Bruce was like mentioning chocolate sauce to a six-year-old.
Robert Muchamore
A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Muslims may fall short of Islam but Islam will never fall short of Muslims.
Habeeb Akande
There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.
Anthony Powell
Love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you. It will set your free.
Mumford and Sons
Tut, tut — fame clearly isn't everything.
J.K. Rowling
The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it
James Bryce
The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language.Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.
Alan Moore
What is that?” Addison inspects the food with a look of sheer revulsion on her face. You’d swear I just handed her a plate full of arsenic. “The Works Burger with fries and extra onions and cheese, exactly as you ordered.” I keep my voice level.She sends me a scathing look. “Do I look like I’d ever consume that amount of saturated fat?
Siobhan Davis
What about damp? What about flooding? Wouldn't it make sense to have a little lawn or garden as a sort of buffer zone between the house and the water? But then it wouldn't be Venice, said Connie's voice in my head. Then it would be Staines.
David Nicholls
Wolves, and stars, and snow: Those things made sense.
Katherine Rundell
What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.
R.D. Laing
Outside everything was uncannily visible in the light of the full moon, but here in the dark shaded alleys the night was conscious of itself. ("The Moon Slave")
Barry Pain