Quotes by British Authors - Page 528

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.
Anthony Trollope
...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed
Kat Banyard
Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,quiet steady sound. Before it grew too darkwatched the blue iris leaning under the rain,the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.A voice. Almost recalled. There have been timesthe gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of ittoo distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebushpierces the table’s reflection, raindrops gazing from it.There have been hands laid on my shoulders.What has been said to me,how has my life replied?The rain, the rain...
Denise Levertov
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' --or else not.
C.S. Lewis
No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she had once been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of these nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer or poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not overly happy. Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:‘We grew up together.
David Nicholls
Samir loves Joe’s face. He studies it every day in class: a face as old as his own but already, in eighteen years, the cli s and hills and odd proportions of its geography have been shaped by life’s weather. Samir likes to observe the ever-watchful green eyes, hidden in their shadowy alcoves over the at nose and cheekbones, and the heavy brow that scrunches up with Joe’s moods – all those sculptural planes could have been carved by Easter Islanders. en there’s the pout of his lips, the pucker of their concentration or the twist of their anger. But most of all, Samir examines the thoughts as they cross the wide-open landscape of the face. Tries hard to read their cloud shapes from the merest shadow.
Peter Bunzl
Dad?" Jesus asked."Yes, son?" God replied."Do we still have any wrapping paper?" Jesus asked."No, we don't. I used it all to make butterflies," God answered."Butterflies?" Jesus asked bewildered."Yes, butterflies," God said."Why?" Jesus now asked."Well, sometimes there is no rain so that means no rainbows. And then sometimes people walk alone or don't look at other people and so that don't see any smiles either. So I cut up the wrapping paper and made butterflies for the people of Earth to see and look at so they would smile.""That's lovely dad, but what about moths?" Jesus asked."They're just small butterflies," God answered.Jesus laughed, "I love butterflies.""I know," God said as he smiled at his son.
Anthony T.Hincks
He slammed the door and ran blindly down the corridor, grabbing at handles. What exactly had he seen? They had been eating with their bare hands, but somehow the only thought he could hold on to was a kind of sickened gratitude that he had been unable to see their faces.
Ramsey Campbell
T.S. Eliot said to me 'There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-criticism & continual practice. And that is by reading other poetry aloud – and it doesn’t matter whether he understands it or not (i.e. even if it’s in another language.) What matters above all, is educating the ear.' What matters, is to connect your own voice with an infinite range of verbal cadences & sequences – and only endless actual experience of your ear can store all that in your nervous system. The rest can be left to your life & your character.
Ted Hughes
It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it—the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west—the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam.
Bernard Lewis
The danger of memory is that it can turn anyone into a prophet.
Anthony Burgess
I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out of the window. I could see myself lying on the pavement. Then I seemed to be standing by the body on the pavement. I was two people. Blood and brains were scattered everywhere. I knelt down and began licking up the blood and brains
Doris Lessing
Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.
Tom Hodgkinson
He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did," replied the girl, shaking her head. "He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I'd rather listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once.
Charles Dickens
But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.
Joseph Conrad
Arrogance based on relentless denial of faults eventually makes a person weary.
Sam Owen
To be honest, going out with Ed after Josh is like moving on to Duchy Originals super-tasty seeded loaf after plastic white bread. (I don't mean to be rude about Josh. And I didn't realize it at the time. But it is. He is. Plastic white bread.)
Sophie Kinsella
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.
William Thomson
I know this: there is no sense to grief. There is no pattern or shape or texture, and there are no books or stories which can lessen the pain at losing a person you have loved, and will always love. There are no rules, with loss.
Susan Fletcher
[S]ome score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be --- as here they are --- mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls of words, and making a pretence of equity with serious faces ....
Charles Dickens
When you cultivate a godly thought life your soul will shine and you will exhibit the presence of the Lord in you.
Elizabeth George
It’s ironic that those who lack self-confidence are often the ones who find it hardest to say no.
Fennel Hudson
Sometimes Midas suspected that life was a film with subliminal messages. Things would move along with an acceptable degree of predictability, then be punctuated by some horrible childhood memory.
Ali Shaw
You know those vampire myths? Bollocks to them.
Rosemary A. Johns
One thing you notice about progress, kid, is that it doesn't happen to everyone.
Jeanette Winterson
Though fervent was our vow,Though ruddily ran our pleasure,Bliss has fulfilled its measure,And sees its sentence now.Ache deep; but make no moans:Smile out; but stilly suffer:The paths of love are rougherThan thoroughfares of stones.
Thomas Hardy
Think what it would be like if you got back to your island and there was no old man, no girl any more. No mysterious fun and games. The whole place locked up forever.
John Fowles
The meaning of existence is that you have simply existed at all.
Christopher Charles Harris
I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.
John Wyndham
She spoke of these with animation, and heard my admiring comments with a smile of pleasure: that soon, however, vanished, and was followed by a melancholy sigh; as if in consideration of the insufficiency of all such baubles to the happiness of the human heart, and their woeful inability to supply its insatiate demands.
Anne Brontë
You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh Well, business as usual , I suppose.
Douglas Adams
Of Course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did, He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is)... Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.
C.S. Lewis
I have to find a place to hideAn island in the seaSurrounded by a racing tideWhere I can live with me
Laurie Matthew
The word 'proof' should strictly only be used when we are dealing with deductive inferences.... Popper claimed that scientists only need to use deductive inferences.... So if a scientist is only interested in demonstrating that a given theory is false, she may be able to accomplish her goal without the use of inductive inferences.... When a scientist collects experimental data, her aim might be to show that a particular theory...is false. She will have to resort to inductive reasoning.... So Popper's attempt to show that science can get by without induction does not succeed.
Samir Okasha
For a woman, every outfit is a hopeful spell, cast to influence the outcome of the day. An act of trying to predict your fate, like looking at your horoscope.
Caitlin Moran
A half knowledge of another's life mostly does injustice to the life unknown.
Thomas Hardy
The true parents of creativity are curiosity and necessity.
Max McKeown
Stories are a communal currency of humanity.
Tahir Shah
Party-spirit . . . which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
Alexander Pope
Who am I? I’m the Breeze, bitch!
Michael Grant
All life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.
Richard Dawkins
Embrace the anxiety of confronting your emotions because it’s often the emotional hitting of rock bottom that ignites our resolve to get back to the top.
Sam Owen
The occupational hazard of being a Playboy Bunny is the aching facial muscles brought on by obligatory smiles.
Germaine Greer
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
Charlotte Brontë
To positively discriminate in favour of groups that have been negatively discriminated against in the past.
Ben Elton
No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.
George Gordon Byron
We are never more creative than when we are at odds with the world and there is nothing so artistically destructive as comfort. Princess Leia taught me that.
Simon Pegg
Hope Was but a timid friend;She sat without the grated den,Watching how my fate would tend,Even as selfish-hearted men.She was cruel in her fear;Through the bars one dreary day,I looked out to see her there,And she turned her face away!Like a false guard, false watch keeping,Still, in strife, she whispered peace;She would sing while I was weeping;If I listened, she would cease.False she was, and unrelenting;When my last joys strewed the ground,Even Sorrow saw, repenting,Those sad relics scattered round;Hope, whose whisper would have givenBalm to all my frenzied pain,Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,Went, and ne'er returned again!
Emily Brontë
We do not write as we want but as we can.
W Somerset Maugham
It takes my breath away!" that's all that I can say.
Anthony T.Hincks
Social media is the empowerment of the individual at the expense of the system.
David Amerland
In no mood for one of her silly games, I snatched it off her and scanned the page. It turned out to be a list of names, all of them boys, and some of whom I recognised. And then I noticed the title: ‘Operation: Popping the Cherry’. I leaped to my feet and fired a glare at each of them in turn, trying not to shout. ‘Are you shitting me?
Aurelia B. Rowl
Reality can be mischievous at times, fragile, fleeting; with the potential to change vastly without warning.
Steven Redhead
Before you can act you must choose. Before you can choose you must know. Before you can know you must feel. And before you can feel you must be trained.
David Amerland
For me, Buddhism is like a living organism. If it is to flourish outside self-enclosed ghettos of believers, it will have to meet the challenge of understanding, interacting with, and adapting to an environment that is strikingly different from those in which it has evolved.
Stephen Batchelor
You can start to change your luck today. Begin believing that you can have what you desire and superior things will arrive.
Steve Backley
Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their mee
Christopher Hitchens
I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.
Agatha Christie
I think it's the same with all the relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good.-- from Quantum of Solace
Ian Fleming