Quotes by British Authors - Page 431

Around thrones the thunder rolls.
C.J. Sansom
ethics is not about platitudes, let alone tautologies, logic or mathematics, but about difficult choices - dilemmas.
Martin Cohen
Spiders... the spiders... they want me to tap-dance. And I don't want to tap-dance!
J.K. Rowling
It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.
Doris Lessing
the toilet is an intimacyonly shared with parents when you are youngand once again when they are olderand with lovers when say on a Sundaymorning stretching into the bathroomyou wake to the sound of stream into bowland go to hug the naked bodystood with its back to you and kiss the neckand taste the whole of the night on thereand smell the morning’s pale yellow lossand take the whole of him in your handand feel the water moving through himand knowing that this is love the prone fleshwhat we expel from the body and what we let inside
Andrew McMillan
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrusts in turn brings forth war.
Megan McKenna
In all science error precedes the truth and it is better it should go first than last.
Hugh Walpole
Hate is bait for the devil, love is the gate to god
Benny Bellamacina
What had she to wish for? Nothing, but to grow more worthy of him whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own.
Jane Austen
Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!”“Of course I haven’t!” said Harry indignantly. “He killed my mum and dad!”“You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!” said Dumbledore loudly.
J.K. Rowling
Beggars do not envy millionaires though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.
Bertrand Russell
I can generally bear the separation but I don't like the leave-taking.
Samuel Butler
Above all remember this: that magic belongs as much to the heart as to the head and everything which is done, should be done from love or joy or righteous anger.
Susanna Clarke
I feel I owe you another explanation Harry," said Dumbledore hesitantly. "You may, perhaps, wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess...that I rather thought...you had enough responsibility to be going on with."Harry looked up at him and saw a tear trickling down Dumbledore's face into his long silver beard.
J.K. Rowling
A little politeness might smooth the way ahead. Knowing it was his turn to be dispatched, the best he could hope for was as swift a death as the one Massetti had so thanklessly received.
Victoria Lamb
Envy is a kind of praise.
John Gay
I couldn’t stop crying. This fact in and of itself alarmed me, because for so long, I hadn’t been able to cry. And now, here I was, weeping. It didn’t feel therapeutic. I know scientists promise that all the negative hormones are being released as you cry, but I didn’t notice my emotional stability rising as the tears fell. I just knew I was crying, and my whole body was shaking, and I couldn’t make it stop.
Stephen Lovegrove
I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.
Neil Gaiman
Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us makes any difference.
Alain de Botton
If I stood you in front of a man, pressed the cold metal of a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?''No, sir.''Are you sure?''Of course, sir. No ways!''What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then? Would you?
Jason Wallace
A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the saftey handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of the ashtray.Which explains how the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present.
Alain de Botton
University of Life. Year One - Advance Adventure Playgrounds. Part One Exam - go to the Third World and survive. No revision, interest, intellect or sensitivity required.
William Sutcliffe
You look... amazing!" And I have to say, I agree. I'm wearing all black - but expensive black. The kind of deep, soft black that you fall into. A simple sleeveless dress from Whistles, the highest of Jimmy Choos, a pair of stunning uncut amethyst earrings. And please don't ask how much it all cost, because that's irrelevant. This is investment shopping. The biggest investment of my life. I haven't eaten anything all day so I'm nice and thin and for once my hair has fallen perfectly into shape. I look... well, I've never looked better in my life.But of course, looks are only part of the package, aren't they?
Sophie Kinsella
Seventeen, eh!" said Hagrid as he accepted a bucket-sized glass of wine from Fred."Six years to the day we met, Harry, d’yeh remember it?""Vaguely," said Harry, grinning up at him. "Didn’t you smash down the front door, give Dudley a pig’s tail, and tell me I was a wizard?""I forge’ the details," Hagrid chortled.
J.K. Rowling
The tamer my love, the farther away it is from love. In fierceness, in heat, in longing, in risk, I find something of love's nature. In my desire for you, I burn at the right temperature to walk through love's fire. So when you ask me why I cannot love you more calmly, I answer that to love you calmly is not to love you at all.
Jeanette Winterson
What a strange creature is a laughing fool,As if a man were created to no useBut only to show his teeth.
John Webster
And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right.Happy Eighth birthday, blog.
Neil Gaiman
In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. He may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stance as many hands high according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.
Charles Dickens
Both men and women who have children as a rule regulate their lives largely with reference to them, and children cause perfectly ordinary men and women to act unselfishly in certain ways, of which perhaps life insurance is the most definite and measurable.
Bertrand Russell
There is sorrow enough in the natural wayFrom men and woman to fill our day;But when we are certain of sorrow in store,Why do we always arrange for more?Brothers & Sisters, I bid you bewareOf giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Rudyard Kipling
She explains that often the people who mean the most to us have to be left behind because they cannot follow us along our destined path.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!
Elif Shafak
Whether he acted rightly or not, I have never been sure. It was the future of a child that was at stake. A child, he felt, ought to be given the benefit of a doubt.
Agatha Christie
. . . you have blighted the promise of youth, and made my life a wilderness!
Anne Brontë
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Alain de Botton
Writing which flows is more like play than work!
Suzy Davies
For the length of time it takes to write a book, you need to believe that you’re the only writer in existence; the only one who matters. You need to shut yourself away and allow the creativity to build up, not leak out through worry and comparisons and doubt.
Martin Cosgrove
No art like the art displayed in our salvation, no cunning workmanship like that beheld in the righteousness of the saints. Justification has engrossed learned pens in all ages of the church, and will be the theme of admiration in eternity.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Autumn arrived and life was in danger of becoming boring again.
Deborah Curtis
Woods are grim places. Farmers shoot squirrels, crows, magpies, and hang them up on trees to warn Mother Nature to get it together or else. Much notice she takes, being in league with God. They're a right pair, more carnage than the rest of us put together.
Jonathan Gash
You have to take your own bold approach, and if you do you will be rewarded with success. Or calamitous failure. That can happen too.
Steven Moffat
Why should a real chair be better than an imaginary elephant?
Virginia Woolf
A scientist has to be neutral in his search for the truth, but he cannot be neutral as to the use of that truth when found. If you know more than other people, you have more responsibility, rather than less.
C.P. Snow
I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.
E.M. Forster
Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
Zadie Smith
The heart together with the mind is the most powerful creative state to bring your wishes and ideas into reality.
Steven Redhead
In the Envoy Corps, you take what is offered, Virginia Vidaura said, somewhere in the corridors of my memory. And that must sometimes be enough.
Richard K. Morgan
Everything sacred begins with a circle of motion.
Glenn Haybittle
Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression “it turns out” to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors “I read somewhere that...” or the craven “they say that...” because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it is research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight. Anyway, where was I?
Douglas Adams
Igor?' said Moist. 'You have an Igor?'Oh, yes,' said Hubert. 'That's how I get this wonderful light. They know the secret of storing lightning in jars! But don't let that worry you, Mr Lipspick. Just because I'm employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn't mean I'm some sort of madman, ha ha ha!'Ha ha,' agreed Moist.Ha hah hah!,' said Hubert. 'Hahahahahaha!! Ahahahahahahhhhh!!!!!-'Bent slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed.Sorry about that, it's the air down here,' he mumbled.
Terry Pratchett
Ask God's blessing on your work but don't ask him to do it for you.
Dame Flora Robson
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
Jane Austen
In speech he stretched out his vowel sounds to give his mouth a rest before the next consonant.
Diane Setterfield
If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.
John Burnside
I think my reputation will look after itself," Holmes said. "If they hang me, Watson, I shall leave it to you to persuade your readers that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.
Anthony Horowitz
Too much time is wasted fighting one self and life itself. Peace and fulfilment emerge the moment you embrace both.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
When the government and electrical utility company jointly harass an electrical fraud researcher, it confirms that the research is progressing in the right direction!
Steven Magee
I couldn't see killing myself if I had a book that was only half-read: Fountainhead, Catcher in the Rye, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, One Hundred Years of Solitude? No. I figured that those who killed themselves first had to finish whatever book they were reading...if it were any good, that is. Of course, there's always the occasional book that makes you want to throw yourself off a bridge just for having wasted your time reading it. But I usually finished those ones, too.
Michael Anthony
ALBUS/RON: How to distract Scorpius from difficult emotional issues. Take him to a library.
J.K. Rowling
There is a budding tomorrow in midnight.
John Keats