Quotes by British Authors - Page 433

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
John Locke
Wracking sobs rip from the innermost chamber of my heart, and I give into them, allowing them to fully take over. Pain lances me on all sides, and I bury my head in my knees, giving in to the heartache.I cry for my parents.For my lost life.For the threat that Addison poses, scaring me in ways it shouldn’t.For a boy I can’t have and shouldn’t want.For the never-ending gut-wrenching hollow ache in my chest and the soul-crushing loneliness I feel.
Siobhan Davis
We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
C.S. Lewis
Ron: [mimicking Hermione] "It's Levi-OOOOH-sa not LevioSAR." She's a nightmare, honestly. It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends!
J.K. Rowling
Out of the night that covers me Black as the Pit from pole to pole I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
W. E. Henley
Belief is the driver that gives energy and power to achieve your potential.
Steven Redhead
I will lay it out in black and white, and my tale will contain more truth than the great dead histories on my father's bookshelves. For they say what happened, but not what it was like. They say what happened, but they do not say why.
Beth Underdown
Blood was the mortar that cemented the kingdom
Jocelyn Murray
I am looking forward to the departure of the corrupt Obama administration in 2017.
Steven Magee
The following Discourse [on art, by Sir Joshua Reynolds] is particularly Interesting to Blockheads as it endeavours to prove that There is No such thing as Inspiration & that any Man of a plain Understanding may by Thieving from Others become a Mich Angelo.
William Blake
It was sometimes said that the grey-and-black mountain range which ran like a spine north to south down that part of Faerie had once been a giant, who grew so huge and so heavy that, one day, worn out from the sheer effort of moving and living, he had stretched out on the plain and fallen into a sleep so profound that centuries passed between heartbeats.
Neil Gaiman
[Gina] I got them Bad Old Cosmic C-Word Blues Again.[Mark] What does ‘c-word’ mean?[Gina] It means continuing to believe even when you don’t feel it. Not letting go even when you can’t find squat to hold onto. Going all the way from the beginning to the end.
Pat Cadigan
If you haven't been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.
Meg Rosoff
These stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, what we have become, or can perhaps be.
Salman Rushdie
We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier. . . . Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation.
Barbara Pym
Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir,’ said Carrot‘What, in Ankh-Morpork?’‘Yes, sir.’‘We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value
Terry Pratchett
You could have done something with newspapers. We didn't do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no Government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we'd been wise enough.
Nevil Shute
One of the chief values reading history, this is the author, is its capacity to "provoke renegade thoughts".
Andrew Roberts
And - just as with winning the lottery, or becoming famous - there is no manual for becoming a woman, even though the stakes are so high. God knows, when I was 13, I tried to find one. You can read about other people's experience on the matter - by way of trying to crib, in advance, for an exam - but I found that this is, in itself, problematic. For throughout history, you can read stories of women who - against all odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed. Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or - most crucially of all, for a teenage girl - simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right - right, down into their clever, brilliant bones - but lonely.
Caitlin Moran
I do... to this day, think that success is being able to look in the mirror and know that I'm alright on that day. I don't believe I've made it–I believe that I'm making it. I believe that I've found my past so that I can live in the present, it's the most important thing to me. The books and the plays and the touring and the gigs and the speeches and the cash...it all pales into insignificance when compared with knowing that I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm going to be okay now.
Lemn Sissay
There is no theoretical reason to expect evolutionary lineages to increase in complexity with time, and no empirical evidence that they do so. Nevertheless, eukaryotic cells are more complex than prokaryotic ones, animals and plants are more complex than protists, and so on. This increase in complexity may have been achieved as a result of a series of major evolutionary transitions. These involved changes in the way information is stored and transmitted.[The major evolutionary transitions, Nature 374, 227 - 232 (16 March 1994)]
John Maynard Smith
They were at the end of their journey, but as far as ever, it seemed, from the end of their quest.
J.R.R. Tolkien
No one, I fancy, would discredit a story that the Archbishop of Canterbury slipped on a banana skin merely because he found that a similar comic mishap had been reported of many people, and especially of elderly gentlemen of dignity.
J.R.R. Tolkien
People afraid of outsiders are easily manipulated. The warrior caste, supposedly society's protectors, often become protection racketeers. In times of war or crisis, power is easily stolen from the many by the few on a promise of security. The more elusive or imaginary the foe, the better for manufacturing consent. The Inquisition did a roaring trade against the Devil.
Ronald Wright
It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fool’s errand.
Zia Haider Rahman
Nothing cheap without reason.
Idries Shah
Silence is one of worst, most vocal enemies, yet people go through many bouts of depression not sharing what is happening. People don’t understand that, but as someone who suffers from it, I can tell you that it’s difficult to be objective about the gray. I described depression to my therapist as a misty fog that surrounds me, heavy on my shoulders, pervading everything and nothing at all. I liken depression to a bird stealing into the depths of your soul, pecking at your disposition until nothing is left. And that is when you break into pieces.
Rachel Thompson
Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
You said th' Magic was in my back. Th' doctor calls it rheumatics.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Man who treat Woman without respect and see Woman ONLY as a public toilett forget where they spend their first 9 months of their Life!
Lily Amis
They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.
Joseph Conrad
I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.
Tahir Shah
When I draw I don't capture your likeness. I capture your soul.
Anthony T.Hincks
I can't stand light. I hate weather. My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another.
Peter O'Toole
What are you most scared of, Caitlin? What I can do to you, or how I make you feel?
Lindsay J. Pryor
We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.
Terry Pratchett
Can we be clear about who we are, what we want? Can we be fully present in our truth, and communicate that? Can we understand each other?
Jay Woodman
The majority of the common people do not realize that calling 911 may result in a stressed out armed police officer that has a range of medical issues and is taking potent prescription drugs being sent to out to them.
Steven Magee
To be mad is worse than not to be if this is what it is.
Johnny Rich
Oh, aye. I'm the devil all right. And last night, you were begging to step into the fire.
Liz Carlyle
Don't let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. raise the rent and kick them out!
Robert Tew
Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
George Eliot
Consciousness is everywhere, let it fill you up.
Jay Woodman
Even those who do not, or cannot, avail themselves of a scientific education, choose to benefit from the technology that is made possible by the scientific education of others.
Richard Dawkins
A verse from a short poem - 'Philosophy is Forestry's Child' - in my Foreword:Ask not which came first, the acorn or the oak.We came as children of the forest;First our wooden cradle, then our kindling for industry.Instead think forward –– trees will shelter us from ourselves.
Gabriel Hemery
When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.
Philip Pullman
Peasants brought up on a tradition of superstitious magic could hardly be expected to distinguish between such ostensibly Christian rituals and the mumbled incantations of the local wizard. And so, to the discomfort of the priests, many came to regard elements of Christian devotion as simple magical spells. The Latin Mass was, after all, incomprehensible to the common people, so it already had the aspect of an occult formula. It came to be seen, like magic, as an essentially mechanical rite through which absolution was achieved by observing the correct procedures. In that case, there was no real need for faith.
Philip Ball
I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about
Ian Kershaw
Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars?
Edward St. Aubyn
We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.
George Eliot
Leave no path untaken.
Neil Gaiman
Of the 403,272 tank soldiers (including a small number of women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic troops knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew—or those at least who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself—would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armored coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply “boiling up.” The tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. “Have you burned yet?” was a question tank men often asked each other when they met for the first time. A dark joke from this stage in the war has a politruk informing a young man that almost every tank man in his group has died that day. “I’m sorry,” the young man replies. “I’ll make sure that I burn tomorrow.
Catherine Merridale
Men do recognise at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration.
Robert Hugh Benson
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
Alan W. Watts
Summerhill children are allowed to go through their gangster period, and consequentially more furniture is destroyed.
A.S. Neill
You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid.
Helen Simonson
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.
Christopher Hitchens
Crying was an acceptable outlet, even if it made you feel raw and empty inside, it was still better than that build up of resentment that grew from not letting your emotions out.- My Bestfriend's Girl -
Dorothy Koomson
Have you thought of an ending?""Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant.""Oh, that won't do! Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?""It will do well, if it ever came to that.""Ah! And where will they live? That's what I often wonder.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Even when I press against him his presence is too far away.
Johnny Rich