Quotes by British Authors - Page 502

Whoever knows God, does not (any longer) say “God”.
Idries Shah
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death.
Bertrand Russell
People who have metal implants should be familiar with the symptoms of radio wave sickness and should keep their environment free of wireless radiation producing products.
Steven Magee
She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
Lord Byron
We may live without poetry, music, and art;tWe may live without conscience, and live without heart;tWe may live without friends; we may live without books;tBut civilized man cannot live without cooks.tHe may live without books,—what is knowledge but grieving?t 20He may live without hope,—what is hope but deceiving?tHe may live without love,—what is passion but pining?tBut where is the man that can live without dining?
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. 'Oh, Jane! my hope - my love - my life!' broke in anguish from his lips.
Charlotte Brontë
Almost any book was better than life, Audrey thought. Or rather, life as she was living it. Of course, life would soon change, open out, become quite different. You couldn't go on if you didn't hope that, could you? But for the time being there was no doubt that it was pleasant to get away from it. And books could take her away.
Jean Rhys
But she wouldn't pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn't that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one's belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn't loading the dice.
Graham Greene
No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.
John Ruskin
Something will turn up.
Benjamin Disraeli
Realism without naturalism... is a leading motif in Modern Art. There is a move away from the struggle to perfect the reflection of Nature in Art's mirror, which I attribute to the all-pervading effects of photography...You must serve the tradition without being its slave. Remember you are an artist, not a draughtsman.
Tom Holt
One of my friends compared me to Bruce Banner, due to my work with radiation and human health. So I looked up Bruce Banner and this is what I found: Banner, a physicist, is sarcastic and seemingly very self-assured when he first appears in Incredible Hulk #1, but is also emotionally withdrawn in most fashions...Banner is considered one of the greatest scientific minds on Earth, possessing "a mind so brilliant it cannot be measured on any known intelligence test." He holds expertise in biology, chemistry, engineering, physiology, and nuclear physics.
Steven Magee
I am too rich already, for my eyes mint
Mervyn Peake
To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Anger is the rising up of the heart in passionate displacency against an apprehended evil, which would cross or hinder us of some desired good.
Richard Baxter
Politicians would only move beyond gestures once there was a critical mass of informed citizens.
Paul Collier
No," said the cat. "Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.
Neil Gaiman
The only incorruptible thing about us.
Henry Fielding
Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
Terry Pratchett
Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions--all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.
Friedrich A. Hayek
The more a victory cost, the more it was esteemed.
Patrick O'Brian
The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject.
C.S. Lewis
The kiss is the greatest of gifts, a miracle, uniquely human. A kiss beneath the mistletoe. A kiss after midnight. A kiss before dying. The devil's kiss. As a picture tells a thousand words, so a kiss says everything that's important. I am told prostitutes never kiss their clients. It is too personal, too human. We kiss to say I love you. We kiss the rings of the self-important. The feet of conquerors. The rich dark earth when we reach the promised land. We kiss our hands and wave as loved ones begin a journey. We kiss strangers before dawn in the first hours of a New Year because our wintry lips are incomplete until they are oiled by a kiss.
Chloe Thurlow
When men are rightly occupied their amusement grows out of their work as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower.
John Ruskin
On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
Mark Haddon
Some people were just getting on with their lives, chatting, being young. It simply wouldn't do.
Russell Brand
I returned, however, with unabated vigour to my work—a more arduous task than anyone can imagine, who has not felt something like the misery of being charged with the care and direction of a set of mischievous, turbulent rebels, whom his utmost exertions cannot bind to their duty; while, at the same time, he is responsible for their conduct to a higher power, who exacts from him what cannot be achieved without the aid of the superior’s more potent authority; which, either from indolence, or the fear of becoming unpopular with the said rebellious gang, the latter refuses to give. I can conceive few situations more harassing than that wherein, however you may long for success, however you may labour to fulfil your duty, your efforts are baffled and set at nought by those beneath you, and unjustly censured and misjudged by those above.
Anne Brontë
Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men. -On Fairy Stories
J.R.R. Tolkien
What would come, would come...and you would have to meet it, when it did.
J.K. Rowling
If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?"The dragon was silent for a long time after this question. And at last he said: "It just came over me. I don't know why. It just came over me, listening to the battling shouts and the war-cries of the earth - I got excited, I wanted to join in.
Ted Hughes
[W]e are hardened to what we know, and we rationalise and even justify cruelties practised by us and our like while retaining the capacity to be outraged, even disgusted by practices equally cruel which, under the hands of strangers, take a different form.
John Keegan
It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.
Aldous Huxley
He's such a dragHe's not insaneIt's just that everybodyHas to feel his pain.
Elvis Costello
The great difference between voyages rests not in ships but in the people you meet on them.
Amelia Barr
Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands.
Idries Shah
Our are speculations are not the measure of our God.
J.I. Packer
Maybe you should say goodbye, Cal.''No.''It might be important.''It might make her die.
Jenny Downham
There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.
Jerome K. Jerome
In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
Alfred North Whitehead
The word 'truth' itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to believed in the interest of unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it.
Friedrich A. Hayek
Other than damnation I know no magic to satisfy your wishes; for ye believe one thing, desire another, speak unlike, act differently and obtain the living value.
Austin Osman Spare
The archaeologists of the future will find themselves excavating heaps of our discarded junk, picking through mountains of DVDs and yoghurt pots and wondering: “who the fuck were these idiots?
Chris Thomas
Evolution has geared the human stress response to last about thirty seconds. It's enough time to facilitate fight or flight. Evolution has not adapted our brains or bodies to handle weeks or months of prolonged stress.
David Amerland
He sat staring before him, seeing nothing but a long line of Mortimers, inexhaustable and prolific to the end of time.
Edith Pargeter
We can achieve more in a moment of compassion than in an hour of anger.
Sam Owen
No honest work of man or woman "fails" it feeds the sum of all human action.
Michelene Wandor
MANY PHENOMENA--wars, plagues, sudden audits--have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man.
Terry Pratchett
Nobody seems to understand that in such matters the tact and sympathy should come from the one who is about to die, not the poor bugger who has to take the news.
Stephen Fry
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirms her possession of divine authority for the use of the sacred name, Jesus Christ, as the essential part of her distinctive designation. In view of this exalted claim, it is pertinent to inquire as to what special or particular message the Church has to give to the world concerning the Redeemer and Savior of the race, and as to what she has to say in justification of her solemn affirmation, or in vindication of her exclusive name and title. As we proceed with our study, we shall find that among the specific teachings of the Church respecting...
James E. Talmage
Not all who wander are lost
j.r.r tolkein
Have the vision to create something wonderful, something that has true value forever.
Steven Redhead
Rules and responsibilities: these are the ties that bind us. We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves. I will do what I have to do. And I will do what I must.
Neil Gaiman
The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.
Terry Pratchett
Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?
Thomas Henry Huxley
Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born.
Ian McEwan
We're living in science fiction, but we don't realize it.
Terry Pratchett
The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out communication is getting through.
Sydney J. Harris
The first question they ask is: "Why was he eternally surprised?"And they were told: "Wen considered the nature of time and understood the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.
Terry Pratchett
How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart!
Eliza Cook
Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished.
Alastair Reynolds