Quotes by British Authors - Page 46

To save your world, you asked this man to die:Would this man, could he see you now, asked why?
W.H. Auden
Just about the worst thing an artist can do is to try and be a nice person.
Amanda Craig
..it must make sense to try & sign up the minister's man, who in the end is the one person who can ensure that you will be awarded the contract. The system seems to work well, & as long as a minister deals only with reputable international firms & doesn't become too greedy, no one complains. Fail to observe either of those two golden rules & the whole house of cards collapses.
Jeffrey Archer
They call him Aslan in That Place," said Eustace."What a curious name!""Not half so curious as himself," said Eustace solemnly.
C.S. Lewis
And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.
S.J. Watson
You are hard at work madam ," said the man near her.Yes," Answered Madam Defarge ; " I have a good deal to do."What do you make, Madam ?"Many things."For instance ---"For instance," returned Madam Defarge , composedly ,Shrouds."The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, feeling it mightily close and oppressive .
Charles Dickens
The Old StoicRiches I hold in light esteem, And Love I laugh to scorn; And lust of fame was but a dream, That vanished with the morn:And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!"Yes, as my swift days near their goal:’Tis all that I implore; In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.
Emily Brontë
Laugh and the world laughs with you snore and you sleep alone.
Katharine Whitehorn
Who are these people sharing the street with me? What is going on in their worlds, inside their heads? Are they in love? If so, is it the kind that Mum and Dad have? Based on having things in common, like raspberry picking and a love of dogs, and Shakespeare, and long country walks? Or is it the knock-you-out, eat-you-up, set-you-on-fire kind of love that I have longed for-and avoided-all my life?
Alison Larkin
Caesar's messengers didn't go round the world saying, 'Caesar is lord, so if you feel you need to have a Roman-empire kind of experience, you might want to submit to him'.
N.T. Wright
The public has an exalted view of authors, and rightly so. Great writers impact deeply on our imagination. And yet, behind the kudos, there sometimes lurks a person at odds with the nobility of the author photo or the 'sheer humanity' of the prose style.
Conrad Williams
Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie for an excuse is a lie guarded.
Alexander Pope
Well, she asked him questions about his age and his attainments. The fact that he was a Catholic gave her pause, but when I explained to her that the present Pope was a well-meaning sort of chap, she said she was prepared to meet him halfway.
Elizabeth Cadell
you are going to be sent home....I 'm glad of it but where's HOME ?
Frances Hodgson Burnett
In the economy of the body, the limbic highway takes precedence over the neural pathways. We were designed and built to feel, and there is no thought, no state of mind, that is not also a feeling state.Nobody can feel too much, though many of us work very hard at feeling too little.Feeling is frightening.
Jeanette Winterson
Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, and perjured. He had voluntarily sworn to have no truck with vampires, and here, attached to his bosom, spread over it and enfolded by one arm, was a greenish hairy thing, like a mat - a loathsome great vampire of the most poisonous kind, no doubt. ‘I should never have believed it of him: his sacred oath in the morning watch and now he stuffs the ship with vampires; and God knows what is in that bag. No doubt he was tempted, but surely he might blush for his fall?’No blush; nothing but a look of idiot delight as he came slowly up the side, hampered by his burden and comforting it in Portuguese as he came.‘I am happy to see that you were so successful, Dr Maturin,’ he said, looking down into the launch and the canoes, loaded with glowing heaps of oranges and shaddocks, red meat, iguanas, bananas, greenstuff. ‘But I am afraid no vampires can be allowed on board.’‘This is a sloth,’ said Stephen, smiling at him. ‘A three-toed sloth, the most affectionate, discriminating sloth you can imagine!’ The sloth turned its round head, fixed its eyes on Jack, uttered a despairing wail, and buried its face again in Stephen’s shoulder, tightening its grip to the strangling-point.
Patrick O'Brian
To paraphrase Hannah Arendt—as portrayed in the recently released movie of the same name—the Nazi war criminal’s actions stemmed from her well-known phrase “banality of evil,” not as a result of mental illness but as a result of a lack of thinking. Their greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. In Rudolf Höss’s case, this would have been his superiors, particularly Heinrich Himmler. To many this conclusion is troubling, for it suggests that if everyday, “normal,” sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future.Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn from the war criminals at Nuremberg. We must be ever wary of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. And we ourselves must be extra vigilant, particularly in this day of accelerated technological power, heightened state surveillance, and global corporate reach, that we do not delegate our thinking to others.
Thomas Harding
The picture's over. Now I have to go and put it on film.
Alfred Hitchcock
Meetings! Meetings! Meetings!Do they ever achieve anything or do they just let a lot of hot air out of an already over inflated balloon?
Anthony T.Hincks
How is Mrs. Rivers doing?' asked the agent, a very tall and large man, well-dressed, bald and depressing, with a manner of gliding into his office from a side door without perceptibly moving his feet which had struck terror into many young writers and caused them to accept the lowest terms Mr. Hobb could offer.
Angela Thirkell
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is 'Lord, I disbelieve — help thou my unbelief.
E.M. Forster
And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling…the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper?
C.S. Lewis
In the Modern Age, there are still those who refuse to contradict a single word of the Bible, even though the Bible contradicts itself.
Jonathan Clements
Are you thankful for not being young?''Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?...
Charles Dickens
It really is the year 2007. Which means I must be...Oh my God. I'm twenty-eight.I'm old.
Sophie Kinsella
When you read between the lines, you must have bloody good eyesight because I can't see a bloody thing!
Anthony T.Hincks
Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;--obey!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The motivation of all artists is 'Look at me, Mum'.
Sebastian Horsley
...Rusty followed. “You should probably pull out your gun. Whatever is in there made enough noise to make me believe it wasn’t a bug.” Kirsten’s stride faltered, and she came to a stop at the door. “Okay, I’m gonna come clean right now. I cannot stand rats or mice. Snakes scare me less. So if I get in there and I see a furry vermin, I will scream like a little girl. If you tell anyone you witnessed that, I will ticket you every time you pull out of your driveway. Are we clear?” “Are you sure you don’t want me to go to the store?” Kirsten met Rusty’s gaze. “Are you clear on what I just said?” “Yep.
Robin Alexander
You’re lucky you didn’t know him back in his tech phase. There was this time in our second year when we were living in the same house. Kitchen table kept wobbling so Landis shoved this metal saucer under one of the legs. Wasn’t until two weeks later we found out it was a land mine.
Benedict Jacka
He's wearing his official university sweatshirt again, which puzzles me a little. I mean I'd sort of understand it more if it said Yale or Harvard or something, because then it would be a fashion choice. But why advertise the fact that you're at a university to all the other people who are at the university with you?
David Nicholls
While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.
Hisham Matar
Don't be sidetracked by one setback along a path of gifts and blessings
Rasheed Ogunlaru
That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the words tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.
Jeanette Winterson
It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us indissolubly with the established order.
George Eliot
I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.
Charles Dickens
I asked her what a true story was because I thought that all stories were made up. She said a true story was called fact, and a made-up story was called ficton. Auntie May said a made-up story is a bit like telling lies, only the people who read them knew that already and so it didn’t matter
Rebecca Lloyd
Something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.
W Somerset Maugham
You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've climbed a mountain.
Tom Hiddleston
Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk.
Idries Shah
Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.
Idries Shah
It's Halloween,The night we all play,Trick or treat,We won't go away.Be we ghoul or goblin, ghost,We'll knock on your door,To see who scares you the most.But cringe not in fear,Or cry out in pain,Cause it's only a game,Oh, what a shame.But don't despair,In the cold night air,Because we'll be back,And then you'll be scared!But not just one,Or even two.And so we bid you,A sweet adieu.
Anthony T.Hincks
But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.
T.S Eliot
what would you call this haircut?"arthur.
George Harrison
He's beautiful. Not specifically to look at, but to be with.
Non Pratt
Dorothy scratched her dark head, yawning wide, and white feathers floated out of her hair.
Laurie Lee
Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.
Idries Shah
The fully human person is in deep and meaningful contact with the world outside of him. He not only listens to himself, but to the voices of the world. The breadth of his own individual experience is infinitely multiplied through a sensitive empathy with others. He suffers with the suffering, rejoices with the joyful. He is born again in every springtime, feels the impact of the great mysteries of life: birth, growth, love, suffering, death. His heart skips along with the 'young lovers', and he knows something of the exhilaration that is in them. He also knows the ghetto's philosophy of despair, the loneliness of suffering without relief, and the bell never tolls without tolling in some strange way for him.
John Powell
Excuses are merely nails used to build a house of failure.
Habeeb Akande
Fiona fixed a slice of bread to the toasting fork and held it out to the flames. So began the ritual. Hot butter melted off the slices of toast and dribbled onto their fingers.
Alex Nye
It has been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a behaviourist who has designed her rat’s maze poorly.
Richard K. Morgan
You know when 1 in 2 marriages ends in divorce, 1 in 42 boys have Autism, and safety complaints from the majority of whistle-blower's are not being upheld, that you are living in a seriously dysfunctional society.
Steven Magee
We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.
Michael Polanyi
Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home - they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and space. There is warmth there too - a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm.
Jeanette Winterson
Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.
George Orwell
The US head of state grew up on food stamps. The British head of state grew up on the postage stamps.
Johann Hari
As to whether the depression will come back, it is every depressive's fear.
Sally Brampton
Corrupt and incompetent police officers have a long history of being protected by their colleagues, police internal affairs and the government.
Steven Magee