Quotes by British Authors - Page 473

In the Scotland of the early seventeenth century, an old woman living alone in Kirkcudbrightshire was accused of witchcraft and on conviction was rolled downhill in a blazing tar barrel. One of the charges against her was that she walked withershins round a well near her cottage which was used by other people. The well was afterwards known as the Witch's Well. These episodes must surely serve as cautionary tales to anyone tempted to transgress the usual custom of walking deasil round a holy well.
Colin Bord
Well, anyhow, the practical outcome of all these damn democratic ideas, is that men of our quality -- yes, damn it! we have a quality -- excuse themselves from the hard and thankless service they owe -- not to the crowd, Dick, but to the race. (Much good it will do is to shirk like that in the long run.) We will not presume, we say, no. We shrug our shoulders and leave the geese, the hungry sheep, the born followers, call them what you will, to the leaders who haven't our scruples. The poor muts swallow those dead old religions no longer fit for human consumption, and we say 'let 'em.' They devour their silly newspapers. They let themselves be distracted from public affairs by games, by gambling, by shows and coronations and every soft of mass stupidity, while the stars in their courses plot against them. We say nothing. Nothing audible. We mustn't destroy the simple faith that is marching them to disaster. We mustn't question their decisions. That wouldn't be democratic. And then we sit here and say privately that the poor riff-raff are failing to adapt themselves to those terrible new conditions -- as if they had had half a chance of knowing how things stand with them. They are shoved about by patriotisms, by obsolete religious prejudices, by racial delusions, by incomprehensible economic forces. Amid a growth of frightful machinery...
H.G.Wells
From little seeds great flowers grow.
Jessie Burton
Darling, when things go wrong in life, you lift your chin, put on a ravishing smile, mix yourself a little cocktail...
Sophie Kinsella
In western societies many people become sick in their thirties, develop serious medical conditions in their forties and are disabled in their fifties.
Steven Magee
I think all wishes are the same, really," she continued. "Whether they ask for this, that, or the other, what they are really asking for is happiness.
William Joyce
Why are so many of us enspelled by myths and folk stories in this modern age? Why do we continue to tell the same old tales, over and over again? I think it's because these stories are not just fantasy. They're about real life. We've all encountered wicked wolves, found fairy godmothers, and faced trial by fire. We've all set off into unknown woods at one point in life or another. We've all had to learn to tell friend from foe and to be kind to crones by the side of the road. . . .
Terri Windling
Where I’m taking you, no one will ever find us. We’ll have all the time in the world for you to grow to love me as much as I love you.
Sanjida Kay
Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
George Meredith
My belief is that if we live another century or so — I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals — and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.
Virginia Woolf
[I]sn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?
Richard Dawkins
October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.
J.K. Rowling
It had been six weeks since I brought my second child, my daughter, kicking and screaming into the world. Six weeks, that magic number men everywhere look forward to and women dread.
Julia Arnold
As a non-believer, I want the atheist case to be made. I want religious belief to be scrutinised and challenged. I want Britain to be a genuinely secular nation, where religious belief is protected and defended as a private matter of conscience. But I feel prevented from doing so because atheism in public life has become so dominated by a particular breed that ends up dressing up bigotry as non-belief. It is a tragedy. And that is why it is so important that atheists distance themselves from those who undermine our position. Richard Dawkins can rant and rave about Muslims as much as he wants. But atheists: let's stop allowing him to do it in our name.
Owen Jones
This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.
Christopher Hitchens
There was a duplication of myself involved, perhaps even a triplication.There was I who was writing. There was I whom I could remember. And there was I of whom I wrote, the protagonist of the story.
Christopher Priest
It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.
C.S. Lewis
He always felt embarrassed opening gifts in front of others, having to act out delight or surprise. He liked to peel off the paper slowly and consider the contents.
Phaedra Patrick
Captain Bradbury's right eyebrow had now become so closely entangled with his left that there seemed no hope of ever extricating it without the aid of powerful machinery.
P.G. Wodehouse
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.
Winston S. Churchill
There's a boy whose affection I am determined to hunt down and kill. It used to be material objects I felt I needed to be happy. It would make me feel stable if I had him. If I had someone like him, it would prove that I'm stable, and then I wouldn't have to do the work to get there. I am constantly looking for ways to cede control of my worries to someone, anyone.
Emma Forrest
I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.
H.G.Wells
Other dragons are bastards. I moved out of my mother's cave after my mother tried to rip my guts out.Granted, I had tried to steal her Tiara of Clairvoyance.
Zen Cho
Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper
Dorothy L. Sayers
We are hard-wired to engage with those we trust, and this hard-wiring has led to a constant push for greater interaction and connection on the Web.
David Amerland
We had, I felt, bared small pieces of our symmetrical souls to each other, fast, as if playing one of those breathless card games, and I had pretended to be as moved as I had been the first time I uncovered it all myself, back in East Hampton.
Olivia Sudjic
What you have within you in your life is what you are after death. If you have explored it to some extent, you would see how life continues after death, and know that after death the consequences of the way that you have lived follow.
Belsebuub
We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something like scientific method in politics is to proceed on the assumption that there can be no political move which has no drawbacks, no undesirable consequences. To look out for these mistakes, to find them, to bring them into the open, to analyse them, and to learn from them, this is what a scientific politician as well as a political scientist must do. Scientific method in politics means that the great art of convincing ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, of ignoring them, of hiding them, and of blaming others from them, is replaced by the greater art of accepting the responsibility for them, of trying to learn from them, and of applying this knowledge so that we may avoid them in future.
Karl R. Popper
Fear was about possibilities. Not things that happened. Things that might.
Michael Grant
It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.
George Eliot
Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society.
Aldous Huxley
The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We never envy another's achievement more than when we know very little about how it was attained.
Alain de Botton
It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Lonely Places, then are the places that are not on international wavelengths, do not know how to carry themselves, are lost when it comes to visitors. They are shy, defensive, curious places; places that do not know how they are supposed to behave.
Pico Iyer
The Beatles saved the world from boredom.
George Harrison
Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.
J.K. Rowling
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
George Whitefield
Any time you think limitation it is not spiritual or god based,
Frank Healy
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and somethings an indirect boast.
Jane Austen
Today, reports of the day’s events are conveyed to the viewing public by way of alternate universes, The Fox News cable channel conveys its version of reality, while at the other end of the ideological spectrum MSNBC presents its version. They and their many counterparts on radio are more the result of an economic dynamic than a political one. Dispatching journalists into the field to gather information costs money; hiring a glib bloviator is relatively cheap, and inviting opinionated guests to vent on the air is entirely cost-free. It wouldn’t work if it weren’t popular, and audiences, it turns out, are endlessly absorbed by hearing amplified echoes of their own biases. It’s divisive and damaging to the healthy functioning of our political system, but it’s also indisputably inexpensive and, therefore, good business.
Ted Koppel
And I've been thinking: if the human race manages to destroy itself, as it often seems to want to do, or if some great disaster comes, as it did for the dinosaurs, then the birds will still manage to survive. When our gardens and fields and farms and woods have turned wild, when the park at the end of Falconer Road has turned into a wilderness, when our cities are in ruins, the birds will go on flying and singing and making their nests and laying their eggs and raising their young. It could be that the birds will exist for ever and for ever until the earth itself comes to an end, no matter what might happen to the other creatures. They'll sing until the end of time. So here's my thought: If there is a God, could it be that He's chosen the birds to speak for Him. Could it be true? The voice of God speaks through the beaks of birds.
David Almond
Nowadays people talk about the things he did as though they made sense. As though even his most disastrous mistakes were only the result of bad luck or hubris.
Jeanette Winterson
In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.
Malcolm Gladwell
Clearly, this was another thing I needed to add to the: ‘repetitive cycle of things that were constantly happening in my life’ list, which currently contained fainting and my ability to find trouble.
Adele Rose
She never called her son by any name but John; 'love' and 'dear', and such like terms, were reserved for Fanny.
Elizabeth Gaskell
You have a powerful army, Kublai, but the best force is one you do not have to use.
Conn Iggulden
Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious.
Abigail Tarttelin
A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Hilary Mantel
There is a lot of willful incompetence in the wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation industry that is in the process of coming to light.
Steven Magee
Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.
Doris Lessing
Every good thing comes to some kind of end, and then the really good things come to a beginning again.
Cory Doctorow
Accepting experiences is through the understanding that everybody was born equal, no labels, no social status, no preconceptions just born a little person preparing to grow-up on what ever path is grown from development, environment and/or otherwise everybody has the right to have a roof over their head, three meals a day, a wage/payment which can support themselves and their families, a benefit system that cares for the disabled and people with mental illnesses, a government that looks out for all it's people, wars quenched not and man made barriers be fallen so every person knows the commonality of being human is that everybody is all different and let people be novices to other peoples experiences so another person gains anew. People all deserve the right to be equal.
Paul Isaacs
The pen that was once a gift has come to represent all that I hope to achieve.
Fennel Hudson
The grave's a fine and private place,But none, I think, do there embrace.
Andrew Marvell
He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
C.S. Lewis
In India even the most mundane inquiries have a habit of ending this way. There may be two answers, there may be five, a dozen or a hundred; the only thing that is certain is that all will be different.
Eric Newby
You can do more with a castle in a story than with the best cardboard castle that ever stood on a nursery table.
C.S. Lewis
Being able to think through and successfully execute ideas, is the gap. The gap leads to success and is so narrow, few are willing to give themselves the final push to squeeze through to the other side.
Colin Myles
He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.
Graham Greene