Quotes by British Authors - Page 533

Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.
John Fowles
Look back, and smile on perils past!
Walter Scott
But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly.“Severus . . .”The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.“Severus . . . please . . .”Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.t”A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.
J.K. Rowling
Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.
Idries Shah
The voices of cold reason were talking, as usual, to deaf ears.
Ellis Peters
Small things start us in new ways of thinking
V.S. Naipaul
The language of God is color because, it's the only thing that everyone understands. And even if you're blind to the world you can still hear the color in everything.If you don't believe me, close your eyes and listen to the wind and feel it on your skin; listen to the birds as they call one another and feel the sunlight on your face.That's love and that's what color is and that is the language of God.
Anthony T.Hincks
This he had noticed while doing his military service back in Turkey. When more than three people slept in a narrow place, sooner or later their breaths would become synchronized. Perhaps it was God's way of telling us that if we could just let go of ourselves, we would all eventually be in step and there would be no more disputes.
Elif Shafak
Throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another... Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic [i.e., bacterial] to eukaryotic [i.e., plant and animal] cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.
Alan H. Linton
And though history sadly doesn't credit the man who first thought of tilting a bicycle's steering axis, it is more likely to be because of feet striking the wheel than an understanding of stability.
Robert Penn
The greater are our affections the deeper are our afflictions, and the more we love the more we have to weep.
J.C. Ryle
Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.
Idries Shah
Is there innocence in ignorance? And if there is, do we tolerate other for their innocence's sake?
Claire North
By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her.
J.K. Rowling
Work is of two kinds: first altering a position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter second telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid the second is pleasant and highly paid.
Bertrand Russell
Why should we change that which makes us unique?
Fennel Hudson
The Bible may be an arresting andpoetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should giveyour children to form their morals.
Richard Dawkins
In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces.
Charles Lamb
It is extraordinary how the human mind sees what it anticipates and is blind to anything that could not be dreamed of.
Tracy Rees
Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this.’” “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset.” “And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
Charles Dickens
When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.
Margery Williams Bianco
Imagination means nothing without doing.
Charlie Chaplin
Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.--"Wanda
Ouida
Unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.
W Somerset Maugham
Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
T.S Eliot
I've managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years," she announced with some small sense of achievement. "I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.
Jasper Fforde
Thinking? You're not thinking. You're reasoning without reasons, and that's just another word for prejudice.
Anthony McGowan
...history is inherently an eclectic discipline and the skills it requires are correspondingly diverse. And therein lie its strengths. Eclecticism is sometimes treated as a dirty word. At the very least it sounds untidy - just so: if historians treat the past in too tidy a manner they lose a great deal...It is precisely the ability to embrace complexities while making sense of them, and to think flexibly about diverse phenomena at distinct analytical levels, that characterises historians' purchase on the past.
Ludmilla Jordanova
I don't think there are any true heroes. Just people who ignore their survival instincts long enough to do something incredibly foolhardy.
Lauren James
There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Confronting a liar makes a better liar.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Black as the night.Black as the depths.Black as your heart.Where your hatred's at rest.
Anthony T.Hincks
That's the trouble with the world we live in, Dana. It's full of people just doing their job and ignoring what's really going on. Care about the rainforest until they get a couple of kids and enough money for a gas guzzling car, or some fancy hardwood dining furniture. Watch all those wildlife programmes and coo over the furry animals, but still eat meat and poultry that was raised in conditions of unbelievable cruelty. I'm sorry, but we live in a relatively free society. The facts are available, but people choose to ignore them. As far as I'm concerned, any educated person who works for the government or a big oil company is guilty through their own selective ignorance.
Robert Muchamore
People don’t talk about mercy very much these days—it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary
Alexander McCall Smith
Make me a shadow on the wall.
Kate Griffin
Some people just don’t find their Prince Charming straight away, they have to search for him.
Charlotte Fallowfield
IT TOOK a conscious effort for Tallow to keep his hand off his gun as he walked up the apartment building’s stairs. There was no threat here. He told himself that with every step. But every step held memory.
Warren Ellis
I shall never have a bath again," I said. "Just dont have one too often," my grandmother said. "Once a month is quite enough for a sensible child." It was at times like these that I loved my grandmother more than ever.
Roald Dahl
A major consequence of being psychologically asleep is the psychological and spiritual blindness which results from it. This results in action not from conscious awareness and true intelligence but from self-righteousness, which leads individuals and society as a whole into an abysmal pit.
Belsebuub
When sense has left a head, it should be called a tail.
Idries Shah
Yeah, trust the fuckhead.
Warren Ellis
They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.
Virginia Woolf
We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon
Walter Scott
Then, Éowyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful. In the valleys of our hills there are flowers fair and bright, and maidens fairer still; but neither flower nor lady have I seen till now in Gondor so lovely, and so sorrowful. It may be that only a few days are left ere darkness falls upon our world, and when it comes I hope to face it steadily; but it would ease my heart, if while the Sun yet shines, I could see you still. For you and I have both passed under the wings of the Shadow, and the same hand drew us back.
J.R.R. Tolkien
For Anne and our cub,for making me and my life less beastly
Adam Nevill
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Winston S. Churchill
The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost!
Evelyn Waugh
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,Let him combat for that of his neighbours;Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,And get knocked on the head for his labours.To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan,And is always as nobly requited;Then battle fro Freedom wherever you can,And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.
George Gordon Byron
And isn't love between two people better than hatred, in this world of violence and mourning? There seemed to me a fragile kindness in their love that survived through this poisonous war. Even though one of them hadn't.
Jennifer Ryan
A good speech like a woman's skirt should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. I have been asked to give my address in the remaining five minutes. That I can do! Here it is: 10 Carlton Gardens London England.
Lord Balfour
Leaving the rat race is easy. All you have to do is quit your job, sell your house, and go and live in a tent in the middle of nowhere. It’s staying out of the rat race that’s tricky.
Fennel Hudson
We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige.
Aleister Crowley
Love is all that counts in this crazy, mixed-up world...
Sophie Kinsella
Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objectsof affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing afaded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me nowto remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, halffancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it wasfolded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I wascomparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.
Charlotte Brontë
As with writing by candlelight, one’s greatest ideas come from ‘the flickering’ between darkness and light.
Fennel Hudson
To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
Bertrand Russell
Fear is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought of a future evil likely to befall us.
John Locke
When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you.
Idries Shah
Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
Samuel Johnson