Quotes by British Authors - Page 512

I keep saying that I had everything, but all I had was endless tomorrows.
Colin Thompson
For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian──ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection that unattainable by the highest art.
Lytton Strachey
Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Idries Shah
Anand finished up his cola cube transaction. I stepped up and slammed three pound coins on the counter like an oppressed inner-city youth born with the skills of rhythm and rhyme.
Nikesh Shukla
Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.
Richard Dawkins
It seemed as though he gave way all at once; he was so languid that he could not control his thoughts; they would wander to her; they would bring back the scene,- not of his repulse and rejection the day before but the looks, the actions of the day before that. He went along the crowded streets mechanically, winding in and out among the people, but never seeing them, -almost sick with longing for that one half-hour-that one brief space of time when she clung to him, and her heart beat against his-to come once again.
Elizabeth Gaskell
When rogues fall out honest men get into their own.
Sir Matthew Hale
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
Neil Gaiman
Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
Neil Gaiman
I have said so many times to many people on the spiritual path, 'You must be strong in yourself to help others. People who are in the emotional sea need someone who can pull them out, not someone who gets in with them and gets dragged away by the tidal wave of human emotions. We have to become emotional lifeguards.
Gordon Smith
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.
Stephen Fry
DREAMSNever by many are marvels wrought,By one or two are the dreams first caught. . .The dreamer must toil when the odds are great,Must stand to failure and work and wait.Must keep his faith though he stand alone,Until the truth of his dream is known.
Edgar Guest
Has anyone sen Mr Snark " "I saw him in the tunnel about 15 minutes ago." "Oh no " wailed Dr Ferman "he will have been atomised." "Oh dear" muttered an MP. "Bye-election.
Alexander McCall Smith
We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.
Christopher Hitchens
What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.
William Wordsworth
Where once we fought for land and God, we now fought to avenge fallen comrades, themselves slaughtered in vengeance. Where could it end? Babes growing to men knowing only days of war.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Oh God! that bread should be so dear And flesh and blood so cheap!
Thomas Hood
Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest.
Gilbert Murray
All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond... flesh, the moment of being alive... then nothing. I had searched in superstition... But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so... tender. I regretted that I had paid it no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me... I saw that those simple things might be true... I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence.
Sebastian Faulks
Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…
David Nicholls
But the thing about Literature is, well, basically it encapsulates all the disciplines - it's history, philosophy, politics, sexual politics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, science. Literature is mankind's organised response to the world around him, or her.
David Nicholls
I died last night. Seventy years too young.
Colin Thompson
Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Malcolm Gladwell
To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long until you are politely asked how you can possibly know right from wrong. Without holy awe, what is to prevent you form resorting to theft, murder, rape, and perjury? It will sometimes be conceded that non-believers have led ethical lives, and it will also be conceded (as it had better be) that many believers have been responsible for terrible crimes. Nonetheless, the working assumption is that we should have no moral compass if we were not somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship. What a repulsive idea!
Christopher Hitchens
People are not hooked on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook but on each other. Tools and services come and go; what is constant is our human urge to share.
Alfred Hermida
And all who told it added something new And all who heard it made enlargements too.
Alexander Pope
It is the duty of Her Majesty's Government neither to flap nor to falter.
Harold Macmillan
Peace between good and evil is an impossibility; the very pretence of it would, in fact, be the triumph of the powers of darkness.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Live as if you already are what you wish to become.
William Jones
Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them...
Aleister Crowley
Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams.
Douglas Jerrold
...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it)...
John Locke
Sufism is the essence of all religions.
Idries Shah
The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.
Henry Green
Injustice is a sixth sense and rouses all the others.
Amelia Barr
Celebrating love, wherever it is found" (Trevor Dennis). I'm using this sermon title as the essence of my novel
Trevor Dennis
...although the reason for the existence of women is obvious enough, nobody has any real idea what point there is in being a man. Men have however, made many attempts to justify their existence.
Steve Jones
Imagine the uproar if the Federal government tried to make everyone wear a radio transmitter around their neck so we can keep track of their movements. But people happily carry their cell phones in their purses and pockets.
Lee Child
With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.
William Golding
You may not need to do it all, design it all or direct it all. But when it comes to making things you want to happen to happen you may well have to inspire and drive it all.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
What though the radiance which was once so brighttBe now for ever taken from my sight,tThough nothing can bring back the hourtOf splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;tWe will grieve not, rather findtStrength in what remains behind.
William Wordsworth
Language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories. To reach out to people we'll never meet.It's the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones:The history of how you felt.
Simon Van Booy
If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them.
Friedrich A. Hayek
Asshole.” “Just for that, I expect you to wrap that dirty mouth of yours around my cock tonight.” He narrowed his eyes on me.I couldn’t believe he’d just said that to me in a fancy restaurant where anyone might overhear. “Are you kidding?” “Babe,” he gave me a look that suggested I was missing the obvious, “I never kid about blowjobs.”Our waiter had descended on us just in time to hear those romantic words and his rosy cheeks betrayed his embarrassment. “Ready to order?” he croaked out.“Yes,” Braden answered, obviously uncaring he’d been overhead. “I’ll have the steak, medium-rare.” He smiled softly at me. “What are you having?” He took a swig of water. He thought he was so cool and funny. “Apparently sausage.” Braden choked on the water, coughing into his fists, his eyes bright with mirth as he put his glass back on the table. “Are you okay, sir?” The waiter asked anxiously. “I’m fine, I’m fine.
Samantha Young
But it was just luck really if the girls survived. You're like a man firing a machine gun into a supermarket who happens not to become a murderer.
Iris Murdoch
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
Julian Barnes
Everywhere I looked, demons of the future [were] on the battlegrounds of one’s emotional plane.
David Bowie
Unhappy! of course you'll be unhappy. Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you?
G.K. Chesterton
People will always be tempted to wipe their feet on anything with ‘welcome’ written on it.
Andy Partridge
... his second... must give him the pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.
Jane Austen
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it And - which is more - you'll be a man my son!
Rudyard Kipling
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath And after many a summer dieth the swan.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
If little labour, little are our gains:Man's fortunes are according to his pains.
Robert Herrick
Chicago - a facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade every type of dubiousness.
E.M. Forster
Whirrun ignored ‘em. ‘Then, when I’ve got two cut,’ and he dropped a pale slab of cheese on one slice then slapped the other on top like he was catching a fly, ‘I trap the cheese between then, and there you have it!’‘Bread and cheese.’ Yon weighed the half-loaf in one hand and the cheese in the other. ‘Just the same as I’ve got.’ And he bit off the cheese and tossed it to Scorry.Whirrun sighed. ‘Have none of you no vision?’ He held up his masterpiece to such light as there was, which was almost none. ‘This is no more bread and cheese than a fine axe is wood and iron, or a live person is meat and har.’‘What is it, then?’ asked Drfod, rocking back from his wet wood and tossing the flint aside in disgust.‘A whole new thing. A forging of the humble part of bread and cheese into a greater whole. I call it … a cheese-trap.’ Whirrun took a dainty nibble from one corner. ‘Oh, yes, my friends. This tastes like … progress…
Joe Abercrombie
After a few awkward moments, Lizzy joined them and they skipped along the avenue, the three of them, laughing and whooping and altogether making an undignified spectacle of themselves.
Mary Balogh
Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
Julian Barnes
What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method.
Idries Shah
Those blue pools still wavered between her eyes and mouth. “I’m gonna kiss you now, minou.”She might have nodded. She might have blinked. One for yes, two for hell yeah.
Kate Meader
Moderation is the key to old age and the doorway to boredom
Benny Bellamacina