Quotes by British Authors - Page 507

The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she obeyed without a sign of hesitation. Deeper comprehension would come to her of the whole awful puzzle. And come it did, yet not in the way she imagined and expected.
Algernon Blackwood
I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.
Nick Hornby
Life is actually a self made web of fate.
Steven Redhead
When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
W.H. Auden
If you are going through hell, keep going
Winston S. Churchill
Between the Bible and the Holy Spirit, you have everything you need to grow spiritually. And the more you grow, the more God can use you.
Elizabeth George
Liberties aren't given, they are taken.
Aldous Huxley
It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.
Alan Moore
I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama.
Jon Ronson
The historical record demonstrates that, on the contrary, many homosexuals chose heterosexuality and failed to maintain it because choice is less powerful than destiny.
Rictor Norton
But you're beautiful, and the beautiful should be given whatever they want.""Hey, what about the ugly ones?""The ugly ones." She poked her tongue out. "It's their fault if their ugly. They're to be blamed, not pitied.
Hanif Kureishi
She was tremendously fond of Ralph. Not hounded by love the way some women were. With Crighton she had been teased endlessly by the idea of it, but with Ralph it was more straightforward. Again not love, more like the feelings you would have for a favorite dog (and, no, she would never have said such a thing to him. Some people, a lot of people, didn't understand how attached one could be to a dog.)
Kate Atkinson
If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.
Winston S. Churchill
The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.
Bertrand Russell
All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law as of all benign laws is fear.
Elizabeth Goudge
The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society.
Owen Jones
I love not man the less but nature more.
Lord Byron
Some Day Someone is going to pick up this book (The Bible) and believe it, and put us all to shame.
Leonard Ravenhill
Again, no disrespect intended, but she looked to me like a divorce that hadn't found a courtroom yet.
James Anderson
And now the birds were singing overhead, and there was a soft rustling in the undergrowth, and all the sounds of the forest that showed that life was still being lived blended with the souls of the dead in a woodland requiem. The whole forest now sang for Granny Weatherwax.
Terry Pratchett
Earth stuff, Mars boy.
Stephen Baxter
It was then that Hook bit him.Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter.
J.M. Barrie
The words of kindness are more healing to a drooping heart than balm or honey.
Sarah Fielding
Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.
Tom Stoppard
If a man were to sow a field, he could not excuse his neglect by saying that it would be useless to sow unless God caused the seed to grow. He would not be justified in neglecting tillage because the secret energy of God alone can create a harvest. No one is hindered in the ordinary pursuits of life by the fact that unless the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable.
Stevie Smith
We cannot change or put right the past, it is our choice whether to be happy in this very moment. The present is all we have and problems only live in the past or the future.
Kate Skylark
In a science fiction novel, the world is a character, and often the most important character.In a mainstream novel, the world is implicitly our world, and the characters are the world.
Jo Walton
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
Aldous Huxley
She was like a queen who beholds the virgin soil of her kingdom invaded and wasted by a traitor.Any other thing she would have pardoned: infidelity, indifference, cruelty, any sins of manhood's caprice or passion, but who should pardon this? The sin was not alone against herself; it was against every law of decency and truth that ever she had been taught to hold sacred; it was against all those great dead, who lay with the cross on their breasts and their swords by their side, from whom she had received and treasured the traditions of honor and purity of race.It was those dead knights whom he had smote upon the mouth and mocked, crying to them: 'Lo! your place is mine; my sons will reign in your stead. I have tainted your race forever; for every my blood flows with yours!'The greatness of a race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Its instincts are noble and supreme. Its obligations are no less than its privileges; it is a great light which streams backward through the darkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honor in your hands.So she had always thought, and now he had dashed the lamp in the dust.--"Wanda
Ouida
In the first instance, it is probably true that in general the higher the education and intelligence of individuals becomes, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and "common" instincts and tastes prevail. This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards; it merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar are the people with low standards. It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of people. If a numerous group is needed, strong enough to impose their views on the values of life on all the rest, it will never be those with highly differentiated and developed tastes -it will be those who form the "mass" in the derogatory sense of the term, the least original and independent, who will be able to put the weight of their numbers behind their particular ideals.
Friedrich A. Hayek
We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.
Ken Robinson
When the moment shifts, and you realize you don't actually want to be alone, that underneath the bravado is an ache that won’t quite fade away, you’re not only aware of how lonely you are, but how much you've been lying to yourself.
J.M. Richards
It is generally recognized that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multitasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics. It is not politically correct to say such things....But it cannot be denied that there are differences between men and women. Of course, these are differences between the averages only. There are wide variations about the mean.
Stephen Hawking
The Doctor: You betrayed me. You betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything I ever stood for. You let me down!Clara: Then why are you helping me?The Doctor: Why? Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?
Steven Moffat
THE BIRD AND THE WATERA bird which has not heard of fresh waterDips his beak in salt-water year after year.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)
Idries Shah
You do not need to be a millionaire to feel successful or be successful. Financial wealth is only one of many possible indicators of success. However, to achieve your dreams and life goals you’re going to need money. And making it requires financial planning and goalsetting. I do not know of any successful person who has been able to simply ignore their finances.
Nigel Cumberland
And I didn't think you believed in god or a heaven.''Having been here thirty-four days,' I tell him, 'I've changed my mind, Sydney.''Why's that then?' he smiles.'Well, if there's a hell like this place, then there has to be heaven somewhere.
David Peace
The evidence knocked clean out of their hands. Nothing but suspicion left…and you can’t arrest a murderer on suspicion, oh dear no! Only felonious loiterer’s and housebreakers and low scum like that. Not an artist in death, like Edmund Alfred Bickleigh, Esq. MRCS, LRCP.
Francis Iles
The great fault of modern democracy -- a fault that is common to the capitalist and the socialist -- is that it accepts economic wealth as the end of society and the standard of personal happiness....The great curse of our modern society is not so much lack of money as the fact that the lack of money condemns a man to a squalid and incomplete existence. But even if he has money, and a great deal of it, he is still in danger of leading an incomplete and cramped life, because our whole social order is directed to economic instead of spiritual ends. The economic view of life regards money as equivalent to satisfaction. Get money, and if you get enough of it you will get everything else that is worth having. The Christian view of life, on the other hand, puts economic things in second place. First seek the kingdom of God, and everything else will be added to you. And this is not so absurd as it sounds, for we have only to think for a moment to realise that the ills of modern society do not spring from poverty in fact, society today is probably richer in material wealth than any society that has ever existed. What we are suffering from is lack of social adjustment and the failure to subordinate material and economic goods to human and spiritual ones.
Christopher Henry Dawson
Guilt, did I say? In what consists ours, unless in the opinion of an ill-judging world?
Matthew Lewis
A smile is on everyone's lips.
Anthony T.Hincks
I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.
Anne Brontë
Introspection and observation of others are vital for the ongoing good health of our own psyche; watch, learn and tweak as required.
Sam Owen
Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.
David Mitchell
I reckon being ill is one of the greatest pleasures of life provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
Samuel Butler
the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
Charles Dickens
Jokes against the legal profession were what the legal profession loved most.
Ian McEwan
We go to the past to lay the blame - since the past can't argue. We go to our past selves to account for our present miseries.
Glen Duncan
Don't you understand how Cho's feeling at the moment?" [Hermione] asked."No," said Ron and Harry together.Hermione sighed and laid down her quill."Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly."A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode.""Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her her quill again.
J.K. Rowling
The fear of God reigning in the heart is the beauty of the soul.
Matthew Henry
I need a favour.’I raise my eyebrows at him in disbelief. What makes him think I’m about to do him a favour? He’s a stranger. And he’s wearing handcuffs.
Sarah Alderson
Happiness is a hard master - particularly other people's happiness.
Aldous Huxley
Hail fellow well meet on the highway to madness. Madness is a small town very far away. Most of us, at some point, find we probably could walk there. Others have a road cave in and dump them there.
Helen Slavin
Violent love eats up what it does love, and it is mere appetite. I scribbled on the bottom of this before sending it back: I would sooner cut my own flesh than do you a hurt. You should not have tried to get between us! But only come to see me, and another time I will stand and let me beat to a mummy.
Maria McCann
And if it doesn't go like that?– Then all your problems will be over and you won't have a thing to worry.
Jack Higgins
The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait.
Iris Murdoch
I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.
Sebastian Faulks
It had been a wake-up call and now all she wanted was to keep her dad in sight and make sure he didn't eat too many Mars Bars or drink too much beer.
Vicky Pattison