Quotes by British Authors - Page 495

If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.
Aldous Huxley
I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course - or I intended it to have - a moral. But the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.
C.S. Lewis
Blessed with so many resources within myself the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it.
Jane Austen
Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.
Susanna Clarke
It's only when you've pieced together a story in several different ways that you realise where the holes are, discover the knowledge that is still missing, the questions you still need to ask.
Rebecca Stott
Sometimes I think it is because we remember when we could smoke in pubs, and that we pull our phones out together as once we pulled out our cigarette packets. But probably it’s because we are easily bored.
Neil Gaiman
We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Conditioning was something I always shied away from, now I've learnt that training never stops.
Mark Donnelly
Had Zach just apologised for kissing her? She didn’t know whether to cry or slap his face. ~Maddie
Monique DeVere
I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe. I said hello to the gatekeeper. He said hello back to me.
Sarah Winman
Oliver did not seem to understand that the only real fulfilment on this earth was to be gained through hard work. Life as a series of momentary pleasures satisfied no one. He needed to make an investment in it, an investment of himself.
Julian Fellowes
She stooped for a stone and dropped it down.'Fancy being where that is now,' she said, peering into the blackness; 'fancy going round and round like a mouse in a pail, clutching at the slimy sides, with the water filling your mouth, and looking up to the little patch of sky above.''You had better come in,' said Benson, very quietly. 'You are developing a taste for the morbid and horrible.' ("The Well")
W.W. Jacobs
the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”“Pretty much.
Matt Haig
Though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not.
C.S. Lewis
The history of learning amounts to a history of specialization.
Beryl Smalley
John Wesley's conversation is good but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.
Samuel Johnson
The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.
Charles Dickens
Let tomorrow cross its own rivers.
William Morris
A young man is afraid of his demon and pulls his hand over the demon's mouth sometimes and speaks for him.
D.H. Lawrence
As dad would always say, when in doubt- play for time.
Nick Bantock
I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him—own any larger piece of him than I now did.
Ian Fleming
She knew full well that writers were sex-crazed bohemians who broke the rules and didn't go out to work.
Jeanette Winterson
Life offers the ability to pursue what catches your attention.
Steven Redhead
Nonfiction that smells like fiction is neither.
David Mitchell
Even innocent Adam is liker to forget God in a paradise, than Joseph in a prison, or Job upon a dunghill(376)[.]
Richard Baxter
Religion and nationalism? I defecate on the altar of religious conviction, and wipe my arse on the flag of national pride.
Ian Martin
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
Mary Bateson
And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn't any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don't expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going.
Mark Haddon
7. 3. 12. 31. 208: Reckless disrespect of the lightless hours will not be tolerated.
Jasper Fforde
History was a way to live extra lives, to cheat the limits of flesh and blood, to roll the rock back from the tomb and free the resurrected dead.
Tony Hendra
Create your own heaven on earth by utilising the power of your heart to bring your true desire into your reality.
Steven Redhead
Keep an open mind. Only an open mind is big enough to contain the secrets of the universe.
Vera Stanley Alder
A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious.
David Brazier
Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are.
John Ruskin
We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret.We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those lines of pitiable crosses, those solitary mounds, those unknown graves, and turn to live our lives out as we may.Which of us were fortunate--who can tell? For you there is silence and cold twilight drooping in awful desolation over those motionless lands. For us sunlight and the sound of women's voices, song and hope and laughter, despair, gaiety, love--life.Lost terrible silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you.
Richard Aldington
What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.
Douglas Adams
There is an intentional disregard for human health and safety in many government agencies that are tasked with protecting it.
Steven Magee
What corrupt corporate governments call a terrorist is what many common people call a resistance fighter.
Steven Magee
Nothing that truly mattersCan ever evaporate,Be excised,Burnt out of your soul.
Scott Hastie
Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.
C.S. Lewis
When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money. It is because we are meaning-focused animals rather than simply materialistic ones that we can reasonably contemplate surrendering security for a career helping to bring drinking water to rural Malawi or might quit a job in consumer goods for one in cardiac nursing, aware that when it comes to improving the human condition a well-controlled defibrillator has the edge over even the finest biscuit.But we should be wary of restricting the idea of meaningful work too tightly, of focusing only on the doctors, the nuns of Kolkata or the Old Masters. There can be less exalted ways to contribute to the furtherance of the collective good........An endeavor endowed with meaning may appear meaningful only when it proceeds briskly in the hands of a restricted number of actors and therefore where particular workers can make an imaginative connection between what they have done with their working days and their impact upon others.
Alain de Botton
What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?
G.K. Chesterton
It was the kind of storm that suggests the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic.
Terry Pratchett
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Salman Rushdie
It rests on the attempt since the 1970s to translate a pathological degeneration of the principle of laissez-faire into economic reality by the systematic retreat of states from any regulation or control of the activities of profit-making enterprise. This attempt to hand over human society to the (allegedly) self-controlling and wealth- or even welfare-maximising market, populated (allegedly) by actors in rational pursuit of their interests, had no precedent in any earlier phase of capitalist development in any developed economy, not even the USA. It was a reductio ad absurdum of what its ideologists read into Adam Smith, as the correspondingly extremist 100% state-planned command economy of the USSR was of what the Bolsheviks read into Marx.
Eric Hobsbawm
One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don't realise they're self-harming. The phrase 'self-harm' brings up thoughts of 'cutting', but that's only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can't see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you've brought harm to yourself. If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can't break, you've self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you're pushing your body further than it can go.We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don't, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU.
Carrie Hope Fletcher
I must break out......start a new life...been here for years...might be getting into a rut...something a bit more exciting...more adventurous...something with more of a challenge...There's not much opportunity for self-advancement in toilets...
Raymond Briggs
Oh don't be pompous and gloomy,darling," chided Amalfi. "There are thousands of places just as lovely as this. And as peaceful.""That's where you are wrong," said Tyson,leaning his elbows on the warm stone. "I've seen a lot of the world, A hell of a lot of it!But there's something special about this island Something that I haven't met anywhere else Do you know what is the most familiar sound in Zanzibar?-laughter! Walk through the streets of the little city almost any time of day or night, and you'll hear it. People laughing. There is a gaiety and good humour about them that is strangely warming to even such a corrugated, corroded and eroded heart as mine and this is the only place that I have hit upon where black and white and every shade in between 'em appear to able to live in complete friendliness and harmony, with no colour bar. It's living proof and a practical demonstration that it can be done.
M.M. Kaye
Well we certainly don't want to see that kind of thing,’ admonished Jeff Stelling. ‘Did it calm down?’‘No,’ shouted Kamara. ‘It got worse. The police were just getting involved when the chairman was hit by a pie thrown from the crowd.’‘Was he injured?’ asked Stelling, struggling to suppress a giggle.‘I don’t think so,’ laughed Kamara. ‘He sat down and started eating it!
Dougie Brimson
Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.
J.R.R. Tolkien
But he didn't have to listen to his father. Taking after your father was optional, wasn't it?
Howard Jacobson
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar there is to new ideas.
Edward deBono
Make no mistake,' He says, 'if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect - until my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less.
C.S. Lewis
Man, sometimes you are clueless. You don’t even see what’s happening.” He perched himself on the arm of the couch so he could look down at Turk. “It’s not just about freaks. I mean, you’re the guy who thinks of ideas and all, but you’re missing it. You don’t even notice that the whole council is either black or Mexican. See, that’s what’s happening: it’s all these minorities hooked up with freaks.”The wheels in Turk’s mind began to turn slowly. But they were picking up speed. “Jamal’s with us and he’s black.”“So? We use Jamal. He gets us into Albert’s. You do what you gotta do. All I’m saying is, you and me, we’re normal people. We’re not black or queer or Mexican. And we’re the ones digging toilets. How come?”Turk knew the answer: because they had failed in their attempt to take over. But he’d never thought about this new angle.“Astrid’s a normal white person,” Turk argued halfheartedly. “So’s Sam.”“Sam’s a freak, and I think he might even be a Jew,” Lance said. His eyes were glittering. He was showing his teeth, grinning as he talked. It wasn’t a good look for him. “And Astrid? She’s not even on the council anymore.
Michael Grant
When we turn to the heavens to look for inspiration, we miss the most important piece, and that is the person right there next to us.
Anthony T.Hincks
I thought and pondered -- vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations,
Mary Shelly
The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.
Sydney J. Harris
After two months of horrible computer problems, I had concluded that the free Windows 10 installation was an unreliable lobotomized operating system as compared to Windows 7 on a 2011 HP G72-B50US laptop computer.
Steven Magee
SNAPE: Strange, isn't it? What comes from within. You need to run. I will keep them at bay for as long as I can.SCORPIUS: Thank you for being my light in the dar
Jack Thorne