Quotes by British Authors - Page 475

Just that one word—sound—sent a strong answering pulse through her body. His tongue curled around syllables that weren’t there, like a promise. This is what you’ll get, if you just let me hear.
Charlotte Stein
One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
George Orwell
There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing at once but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.
Lord Chesterfield
It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.
T.H. White
The best scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing to how hard they tried
Richard Dawkins
England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war-madness that ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language. I found serious conversation with my parents all but impossible.
Robert Graves
One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash.
Terry Pratchett
There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.
Christopher Hitchens
Disbelief is the first great silencer.
Laura Bates
That small difference made all the difference.
Johnny Rich
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
Jane Austen
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer—committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.
George Eliot
Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.
Charles Lamb
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
Idries Shah
Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.
Karen Armstrong
So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The 'vacuum' will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labor of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it casually slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover. An awful embarrassment awaits the British if they do not declare for a republic based on verifiable laws and principles, both political and scientific.
Christopher Hitchens
Is thyselves even a word?
Emma Harrison
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
G.K. Chesterton
In truth, the history of political thought is an end in itself, the highest peak of political education. The crowning achievement of political knowledge, it will be argued in these pages, consists precisely in the ability to partake of the visions of man, society and the state to be found in the writings of our most eminent thinkers, in the ability to enjoy political 'conversation' at its highest level and in its longest historical expanse. This ability is not (or not obviously) an 'aid' to any other aspect of the study of politics, and it should not be construed as one; on the contrary, it is these other aspects (institutions and behaviour for example) which should be seen as so many intellectual aids facilitating our comprehension of the history of political thought.
Robert Nandor Berki
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
George Eliot
We are nature; we are nature as we munch gum and check the phone; we are nature as we queasily regret our imperfection, turning the glossy page, turning our glossy stomachs; we are nature as we hear them witter inanely on the radio, desecrating the silence with the violence of their idiocy and dumb verdicts, chattering and grooming, picking through the ticks in their hair, marveling at new minutia.
Russell Brand
But you're dead," said Harry."Oh yes," said Dumbledore matter-of-factly."Then...I'm dead too?""Ah," said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. "That is the question, isn't it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.”They looked at each other, the old man still beaming."Not?" repeated Harry."Not," said Dumbledore."But…" Harry raised his hand instinctively toward the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there. "But I should have died—I didn't defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!""And that," said Dumbledore, "will, I think, have made all the difference.
J.K. Rowling
I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
Joseph Conrad
It’s important to be aware that many families are dysfunctional, but we can change the patterns. Even if a child grew up in an aggressive or addictive household, they can heal and move past that with immense emotional resilience, wisdom and gratitude. This is what recovery can offer anyone who, like you, is open-minded, willing and ready to explore self-awareness and take action.
Christopher Dines
Personally, I think, so what? Money's just a thing and things change. That's what I've found. One minute something's really there, right next to you, and you can cuddle up to it. The next it just melts away, like a Hershey's kiss.
Frank Cottrell Boyce
There is great worth in holding universal truths and timelessly beautiful words in your heart, which will stay there forever, infusing your thoughts and speech…
Dan Stevens
A positive is just two negatives going in two different directions. So, if something doesn't work, change tact, and come at it from a different direction. You never know, it may just work.That's being positive for ya!
Anthony T.Hincks
Believe me, It would be better if we didn't meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you're still a child.
Anthony Horowitz
Let us begin by giving all proper respect to what neuroscience can tell us about ourselves: it reveals some of the most important conditions that are necessary for behavior and awareness. What neuroscience does not do, however, is provide a satisfactory account of the conditions that are sufficient for behavior and awareness. ... The pervasive yet mistaken idea that neuroscience does fully account for awareness and behavior is neuroscientism, an exercise in science-based faith. ... This confusion between necessary and sufficient conditions lies behind the encroachment of “neuroscientistic” discourse on academic work in the humanities...
Raymond Tallis
Its easier to start a global business than a local one, make your business one where you can work from anywhere in the world
Roger James Hamilton
We all have the innate capacity to feel free.
Beth Kempton
Now, where do I bring this thing down?" I asked. There was a hesitation, then, "You don't. We didn't design it to return. It was a redundancy we had no need for. Too costly, in terms of resources." "So what do I do? I just saved the Earth. And now I suffocate out here?
Neil Gaiman
Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.
Charlotte M. Mason
The mind of man works with strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented by the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be, and deserves fuller investigation.
Virginia Woolf
She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good...
Eva Ibbotson
However fast you run, or however skilfully, you can’t run away from your own feet.
Idries Shah
How unfortunate, considering I have decided to loathe him for eternity
Jane Austen
If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.
Neil Gaiman
And then of course there was her opinion to consider. Would she ever care to entertain the thought of kissing him, let alone marrying him? He was willing to bet his life that she wasn't. Not yet anyway. Therefore, he had made up his mind. He had devised a carefully thought-out plan, its sole purpose being to eventually ensure Emily's hand in marriage. And he would do it the old fashioned way--through trickery.
Sophie Barnes
I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.
Kenneth Clark
What is Zen? Zen means doing anything perfectly, making mistakes perfectly, being defeated perfectly, hesitating perfectly, doing anything perfectly or imperfectly, perfectly. What is the meaning of this perfectly? How does it differ from perfectly? Perfectly is in the will; perfectly is in the activity. Perfectly means that at each moment of the activity there is no egoism in it… our pain is not only our own pain; it is the pain of the universe. The joy of the universe is also our joy. Our failure and misjudgment is that of nature, which never hopes or despairs, but keeps on trying. R. H. Blyth
R.H. Blyth
Sir, I’ve known him ever since he was born! We’ve played snowball, and built snow-houses together, which are called igloos, and once, when one of Santa’s reindeer was sick on Christmas Eve, Snow Bear stepped in to help with the presents, and load them on the sleigh - he’s very kind, and clever, and strong, you know.
Suzy Davies
She is a jewel far richer than a mountain of coin could bring!
Andrea Zuvich
It's just hard," Harry said finally, in a low voice, "to realize he won't write me again
J.K. Rowling
[T]here cannot be a more certain symptom of the approaching ruin of a State than when a firm adherence to party is fixed upon as the only test of merit, and all the qualifications requisite to a right discharge of every employment, are reduced to that single standard.
Edward Wortley Montagu
I want to change the world, and do something valuable and beautiful. I want people to remember me before I'm dead, and then more afterwards.
Russell Brand
A godly man often grows best when his worldly circumstances decay. He who follows Christ for his bag is a Judas; they who follow for loaves and fishes are children of the devil; but they who attend him out of love to himself are his own beloved ones. Lord, let me find my life in thee...!
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.
Stephen Fry
There was something factitious and brittle and thereby utterly feminine about her charm which made me want to crush her, even to crunch her. She had a slight cast in one eye which gives her gaze a strange concentrated intensity. Her eyes sparkle, almost as if they were actually emitting sparks. She is electric. And she could run faster in very high-heeled shoes than any girl I ever met.
Iris Murdoch
Simplicity takes time, patience & practice. Complexity offers too many excuses for failure
Dean Cavanagh
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
Thomas Henry Huxley
There's no such thing as effortless beauty--you should know that.There's no effort which is not beautiful--lifting a heavy stone or loving you.Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I'm not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn't love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?
Jeanette Winterson
In the spring of 1990 I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to cover a summit meeting between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Herbert Walker Bush. This fairly routine political event took on sudden significance when, on the evening before the talks were scheduled to begin, Saddam Hussein announced that the independent state of Kuwait had, by virtue of a massive deployment of military force, become a part of Iraq. We were not to know that this act—and the name Saddam Hussein—would dominate international politics for the next decade and more, but it was still possible to witness something extraordinary: the sight of Mrs. Thatcher publicly inserting quantities of lead into George Bush’s pencil. The spattering quill of a Ralph Steadman would be necessary to do justice to such a macabre yet impressive scene.
Christopher Hitchens
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
Alexander Hamilton
We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
John Henry Newman
If you KNOW that you’re FUCKED Then you’re NOT If you think that you’re NOT THEN YOU ARE!Isn’t that lovely? Iambic pentangle?
Martin Atkins
I admire a contented mind. I revere enjoyment of the simple things. I can imagine that contentment has a high degree of truth. But the human tendency is to take good as normal, and one's natural right, and so no cause for satisfaction and pleasure. This is accompanied by the habit of regarding bad as abnormal and a personal outrage.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
To its critics, the study of theology distracts from real life. But, at its best, theology inspires and informs precisely the committed and caring ministry.
Alister E. McGrath
Any fool can tell the truth but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler