Quotes by British Authors - Page 437

All those years when Ronni thought she was sick, all those years convinced that every mole was melanoma, every cough was lung cancer, every case of heartburn was an oncoming heart attack, after all those years, when the gods finally stopped taking care of her she wasn't scared. What a pity, she thought after the doctor first diagnosed her. Then, when she refused to believe it, after the second, and the third, agreed, she thought again, what a pity I wasted all those years worrying about the worst. Somehow now that the worst was upon her, it was peaceful, calming, as if this was what she had always been waiting for. Now that it was here, it wasn't scary at all.
Jane Green
This will not be the end of the Clans. As long as I have breath in body, the Clans will be safe.
Erin Hunter
She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder."In the silence of the woods, Polly turned."I can't see her," she said."I am happy for you," said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug."But I didn't see anything," said Polly."No," said Wazzer. "But you turned around...
Terry Pratchett
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast.
William Wordsworth
For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in anaccumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimismwere more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It washard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep thepast itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.
Lionel Shriver
America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.
Bernard Lewis
Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you choose for yourself, the other God chose for you.
Habeeb Akande
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion for the instinctual tribes must be satisfied.
Cyril Connolly
In the last moment of his life, he turned his fading "flame of life" into a huge fire that enveloped the world. I've never laughed more than on that day...!! I've never cried more than on that day... I've never drank more either..!! He was our captain... and he was a magnificent man...!!!
Rayleigh
Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that "I" and all other "things" now present will vanish, until this knowledge compels you to release them - to know it now as surely as if you had just fallen off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Indeed you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it's no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all.
Alan W. Watts
There is a word I have always avoided in my writing, my life, my thoughts. That word is love. What does it mean? How do you deal with it? If you find it and lose it, how do you get over it? Love is something you feel and when you feel it you can’t trust it or define it. How can you sustain love for a long time? A short time? You may love your family, your friends. But you don’t invite them inside your body.
Chloe Thurlow
Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
Mary Bateson
No social stability without individual stability.
Aldous Huxley
I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.
Wilkie Collins
Of course. Silly me. Such a sad, exciting score, which no doubt you can play? So many accomplishments, Mr. Grey.”“And the greatest one is you, Miss Steele.
E.L. James
Every unearnest minister is an unfaithful one.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
This was her destiny, and it was a fit and proper one. She was not unwilling, but she knew this was a fateful moment, and she had a sense of doors closing behind her and the path of her life being fixed irrevocably.
Ken Follett
I see dull people as projects ... to be reformed
Ben Elton
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
Oliver Sacks
As far as he could see, the drawings were simply alive. They might be colored earth on rock, but they were as alive as the kangaroo that'd just hopped away.
Terry Pratchett
Not only are poor, unemployed, less will-educated and non-white people more likely to become depressed, but they are also least likely to benefit from treatment by either antidepressants or psychotherapy. That is why combating depression requires more than merely providing effective treatment for those who are already suffering from it. We also need the change the social conditions - such a racism, unemployment, poverty, unaffordable housing, and lack of adequate education - that put people at increased risk of becoming depressed.
Irving Kirsch
We are in the era of dysfunctional relationships.
Steven Magee
I have been too young to know, and I have been too old to care. It’s in that oh so narrow slice between that memories are made.
Mark Lawrence
I have all these things that I want to say to her, like... Like how I can tell she's a lonely person, even if other people can't. Cause I know what it feels like to be lost and lonely and invisible.
Richard Ayoade
The living world has become impoverished. Species are being lost every day. Energy and other resources are nearing exhaustion. The environment is deteriorating. Pollution is everywhere. Climate is changing. Natural balances are threatened.
Christian de Duve
Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By most astounding stroke of luck and infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you do with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulations. Well done. You really are special.
Bill Bryson
Pain is a good cleanser of the mind and therefore of the sight. Matters which seem to mean the world, in health, are found to be of no import when pain is hard upon you.
Richard Llewellyn
Someday I'll understand more of these things. At the moment I just have to think them through. Not everything you want to know is explained properly on Google.
Meg Rosoff
Every impression ever made on a person from newborn babyhood onwards will contribute to the shape and texture of the imagination.
Lesley Glaister
Sanity today appears to rest very largely on a capacity to adapt to the external world—the interpersonal world, and the realm of human collectivities.As this external human world is almost completely and totally estranged from the inner, any personal direct awareness of the inner world already has grave
R.D. Laing
On the morning of what should have been Amelia Ashley's birthday, the river valley that had once housed High Bridge changed for Joshua Mayhew. For the first time in many years, it seemed beautiful to him. For the first time in many years, it was beautiful.
Tara Hudson
The best business models become role models for others.
David Hieatt
In the middle, the river was a deep green, scattered with rocks poking their noses up for a breath. The water charged around them, creating eddies and whirlpools. Closer to the bank, the current dragged lengths of weed along with it so it seemed that long-haired women swam just under the surface, never coming up for air.
Claire Fuller
If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.
Ian Stewart
If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy? I don’t admit to being hopeless, though: only the spectacle is a profoundly strange one; and as the current answers don’t do, one has to grope for a new one, and the process of discarding the old, when one is by no means certain what to put in their place, is a sad one.
Virginia Woolf
The very best and the very worst of life will come from [their] ability to love strangers.
Simon Van Booy
Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.
Terry Pratchett
When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable
Martin Amis
Every choice is a loss. The past is not where you left it.
Ruth Padel
Time travel? I believe there are people regularly travelling back from the future and interfering with our lives on a daily basis. The evidence is all around us. I’m talking about how every time we make an insurance claim we discover that somehow mysteriously the exact thing we’re claiming for is now precisely excluded from our policy.
Douglas Adams
Tell me about love when you've been with someone for years, cared for them when they're ill, put up with them when they're miserable or grumpy, taken the sharp side of their tongue and still come back. Tell me about love when you've acted quite appallingly, and the other person has still accepted you.
Mark Chadbourn
It's not a luxury if you can't do without it!
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Sentiments, as I have found, can be harvested from places where our memories are fondest.
Fennel Hudson
Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up.
Roald Dahl
Is that all, sir? Only we've got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money faster'n we can make it, which leads to a bit of what I can only call a conundrum—""You mean that if you do overtime you have to do more overtime to pay for it?" said Moist, still pondering how illogical logical thinking can be if a big enough committee is doing it."That's right, sir," said Shady. "And down that road madness lies.""It's a very short road," said Moist, nodding.
Terry Pratchett
When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.
George Eliot
When you dance, your whole body dances, your skin and bones, your soul, The tips of your fingers and the roots of your hair. When you stop dancing you stop living.
Chloe Thurlow
It is very difficult to motivate people to revolution when they are extremely comfortable and well off.
Neal Asher
If slander be a snake it is a winged one - it flies as well as creeps.
Douglas Jerrold
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston S. Churchill
The best career advice given to the young ... is "Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it."
Katharine Whitehorn
Life is a very beautiful dream, he thought. I'm so glad I chose not to wake up from it just yet.
Christopher Fowler
‎A change of work is the best rest.
Arthur Conan Doyle
If we are to be women in power, then it must be power on very different terms. we have to find a new source of energy. New structures of power. Ones that don’t deplete us or our environment. We need to run our lives on sustainable energy.
Lucy H. Pearce
Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
Wilkie Collins
A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.
Graham Greene
I'm crazy, Zed.' There, I'd admitted it.'Uh-huh. And I'm crazy too -about you.
Joss Stirling
I can’t hope to convey the full effect of the embraces and avowals, but I can perhaps offer a crumb of counsel. If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. The difference made will almost certainly be more than you have calculated
Christopher Hitchens
The real difference between Francis and Dominic, which is no discredit to either of them, is that Dominic did happen to be confronted with a huge campaign for the conversion of heretics, while Francis had only the more subtle task of the conversion of human beings.
G.K. Chesterton