Quotes by British Authors - Page 465

Some believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our unending search, our abiding desire for immortality.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I want to thank you for the profound joy I've had in the in the thought of you.
Rosie Alison
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
James McNeill Whistler
Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.
Malcolm Lowry
Women are silenced by both the invisibility and the acceptability of the problem.
Laura Bates
Love. He recoiled from the very idea. He knew all about love: love was following his best friend around school like a lost puppy, putting up with all manner of shit just to be near him. Love was sobbing himself to sleep night after endless night because the guy who’d taken his virginity hadn’t called him back. Love was a thousand shattered dreams and a flood of memories that made him cringe. Love could fuck off.
Kate Aaron
...to ride well to hounds is simply a diversion. It leaves no record. But already, my dear Charlotte, you have created something, a legacy.
Daisy Goodwin
A traditional house smelled of wood smoke, the earth, and of thatch; all good smells, the smell of life itself.
Alexander McCall Smith
Of what value is your life, unless you are willing to sacrifice it for those you love?
Wayne Gerard Trotman
You can never be sure where you are with magic.
Jo Walton
That's the thing about destiny: It can't be predicted, and it's usually pretty odd.
Jasper Fforde
Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,There's always Pooh and Me.Whatever I do, he wants to do,"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.Let's go together," says Pooh, says he."Let's go together," says Pooh.
A.A. Milne
The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution—not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions—in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment—often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.
Joseph Conrad
This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect.
Alexander McCall Smith
We cannot help where we are born or how we are raised," Tel Hesani said. "But we can reject the twisted beliefs of those around us if we need to. Our loved ones and elders don't always know what is best. A man should listen to his heart and make his own decisions about what is wrong and what is right.
Darren Shan
Bijli fails in the dead of night / Won’t help to call “I need a light” / You’re in Karachi now / Oh, oh you’re in Karachi now. / Night is falling and you just cant see / Is this illusion or KESC / You’re in Karachi now
Kamila Shamsie
The man who goes to the top is the man who has something to say and says it when circumstances warrant. Men who keep silent underdressed are moral cowards.
Richard Llewellyn
There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.
George Eliot
When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.
Caitlin Moran
What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
Douglas Adams
Like money used wisely, awareness comes & we let it go. Like life, it arises infinitely, to tease & to soothe, to flow through us.
Jay Woodman
Bentley is a good bee with a shaky sense of direction and an appetite for mayhem. Just don't call him a drone. He hates that.
John Hopkins
People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises, accompanied by sharp intakes of breath of the sort normally associated with a seizure or heart failure. And by these means we converse. Talking, when you think about it, is a very strange business indeed.
Bill Bryson
Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets
Aneurin Bevan
Hope is only the love of life.
Sally Brampton
Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.
Aldous Huxley
The more things we accumulate, the more cluttered our lives become, and the more stressed we feel as we are compelled to think about them. Life is about people not about things.
Natalie Vellacott
But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy.
G.K. Chesterton
A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.
Richard K. Morgan
Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.
Kingsley Amis
one of the most important things you can do for yourself is have a strong sense of your own greatness... because many things and people will misjudge you and count you at what they thing you are or can achieve. Their limits are not true... yours are
Marsha Wright
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.
Evelyn Waugh
But writers and their woes: they couldn't be parted. Not for anything.
Naomi Wood
The past, the present and the future - none of those are set. We know that now. They change as we change.
Aliya Whiteley
If you are renewed by grace, and were to meet your old self, I am sure you would be very anxious to get out of his company.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I'm going to die whatever you do, but I'm not afraid.
Erin Hunter
There are those who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one...
Neil Gaiman
I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.
Bill Bryson
The Buddha-nature which is ours from the very beginning is like the sun which emerges from the clouds, or like a mirror which, when rubbed, regains its original purity and clarity. (217)
Edward Conze
And now, talking of praying, I realise sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.
Anthony Burgess
Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.
The Kinks
Humans are not made for endless light. Humans need their darknesses.
Ian McDonald
As his mind becomes purer and his emotions come under control, his thoughts become clearer and his instincts truer. As he learns to live more and more in harmony with his higher Self, his body's natural intuition becomes active of itself. The result is that false desires and unnatural instincts which have been imposed upon it by others or by himself will become weaker and weaker and fall away entirely in time. This may happen without any attempt to undergo an elaborate system of self-discipline on his part: yet it will affect his way of living, his diet, his habits. False cravings like the craving for smoking tobacco will vanish of their own accord; false appetites like the appetite for alcoholic liquor or flesh food will likewise vanish; but the more deep-seated the desire, the longer it will take to uproot it--except in the case of some who will hear and answer a heroic call for an abrupt change.
Paul Brunton
I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone.
Ford Madox Ford
Three deep cravings of the self, three great expressions of man's restlessness, which only mystic truth can fully satisfy. The first is the craving which makes him a pilgrim and a wanderer. It is the longing to go out from his normal world in search of a lost home, a 'better country'; an Eldorado, a Sarras, a Heavenly Syon. The next is the craving of heart for heart, of the Soul for its perfect mate, which makes him a lover. The third is the craving for inward purity and perfection, which makes him an ascetic, and in the last resort a saint.
Evelyn Underhill
When placing an emergency call, it is important to remember that a corrupt or incompetent cop may be on their way to you.
Steven Magee
The one who cannot see your vision will be blinded by your mission.
Habeeb Akande
We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters. . . . To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life.
Charlotte M. Mason
The king was silent. "Ents!" he said at length. "Out of the shadows of legend I begin a little to understand the marvel of the trees, I think. I have lived to see strange days. Long we have tended our beasts and our fields, built our houses, wrought our tools, or ridden away to help in the wars of Minas Tirith. And that we called the life of Men, the way of the world. We cared little for what lay beyond the borders of our land. Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of the strange places, and walk visible under the Sun.""You should be glad," Théoden King," said Gandalf. "For not only the little life of Men is now endangered, but the life also of those thing which you have deemed the matter of legend. You are not without allies, even if you know them not.""Yet also I should be sad," said Théoden. "For however the fortune of war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?
J.R.R. Tolkien
Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.
Stefan Collini
The sun is up, the sky is blueIt's beautiful, and so are you
John Lennon
Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight.
R.D. Ronald
Where's the point in fighting and slaying if you can make a friend out of anybeast instead of a foe?
Brian Jacques
Other, dryer customers came and went, having just stepped out of their conveyances or popped down the street from their houses in the town. They left their umbrellas dripping at the door, and looked at her with that particular combination of sympathy and amusement that the soaked seem always to elicit in the dry.
Jo Baker
When the flames of life are gnawing away at your butt, run faster, quicker, and harder than you've ever run before, because I guarantee it that life will condition you, harder than any trainer ever will.When you state to yourself with the utter most believe, “I will achieve this,” than you are on the path, and this is when life throws obstacles left, right, straight on and which other way, but keep going. Because you will make it
Mark Donnelly
I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation.
H.G.Wells
Why shine, when there's nothing to shine on?
Kevin Brooks
It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain.
Francis Cornwallis Maude
Ow! My brains!
Douglas Adams