Quotes by British Authors - Page 554

Our whole life is like a play.
Ben Jonson
So I believe in the redeeming power of stories, I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.
Neil Gaiman
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith
There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.
Douglas Adams
They're like children, really. Only children are far more logical which makes it difficult sometimes with them. But these people are illogical, they want to be reassured by your telling them what they want to believe. Then they're quite happy again for a bit.
Agatha Christie
You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.
Neil Gaiman
The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.
Winifred Holtby
The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary... She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.
Thomas Hardy
Is it true,’ she said, ‘that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up.’‘Well’, I answered annoyed, ‘that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream.’‘But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?’‘And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal?’‘More easily,’ she said, ‘much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.
Jean Rhys
Thank goodness I was never sent to school it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
Beatrix Potter
Artists, composers and writers...are bent upon capturing and reining in the insights of a fugitive imagination, always inclined to shoot off into the distance, before they can get away, and on bringing them back into the immediacy of material engagement. Like hunters, they too are dream-catchers.
Tim Ingold
One thing about London is that when you step out into the night, it swallows you.
Sebastian Faulks
If you run a business, 80% of your business probably comes from 20% of your customers. If you are a creative person, 80% of your awards/recognition/income will come from 20% of your output.
David Hieatt
Minerva, kindly go to Hagrid's house, where you will find a large black dog sitting in the pumpkin patch. Take the dog to my office, tell him I will be with him shortly, then come back here.
J.K. Rowling
People are predictable. That's what makes them easy to kill.
Shaun Jeffrey
They have fixed our nutrition and arranged our life-span. More than this, and ahead of this, efforts will not be productive.
Idries Shah
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
J.K. Rowling
The marvel of our Bible never shows more marvellous than at such times, when you see it in deed and in truth the Sword of the Spirit, and it cuts.
Amy Carmichael
Rain may cleanse the Earth, but it doesn't wash away our tears.
Anthony T.Hincks
Sometimes people say that we're living in the future, and time's up for science fiction, but I think that never will be, because science fiction really isn't about the future. It's about change and present-day concerns
Stephen Baxter
Falling in love is like falling from a high cliff into a warm silky sea, the falling is like flying and the landing is like a glimpse of the divine.
Chloe Thurlow
Listen to your heart, not your head.
Fennel Hudson
What you theoretically know vividly realize.
Francis Thompson
I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.
George Eliot
In the future, violence would clearly become a valuable form of social cement.
J.G. Ballard
I am a writer, I'm supposed to be intense and emotional,
Natasha Duncan-Drake
I’ve had a lot of food but if you don’t jiggle me too much you can have your wicked way with me.
Samantha Young
The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things.
G.K. Chesterton
. . . I'm not sure we always respect the mysteries of the locked door and the dangers of the storytelling problem. There are times when we demand an explanation when an explanation really isn't possible, and, as we'll explore in the upcoming chapters of this book, doing so can have serious consequences. 'After the O.J. Simpson verdict, one of the jurors appeared on TV and said with absolute conviction, "Race had absolutely nothing to do with my decision,"' psychologist Joshua Aronson says. 'But how on earth could she know that? What my [and others] research . . . show[s] is that people are ignorant of the things that affect their actions, yet they rarely feel ignorant. We need to accept our ignorance and say "I don't know" more often.
Malcolm Gladwell
It is because of this notion [of species essence] that we demand that a severely brain-damaged person should have the same rights as a university professor, or a physically disabled person the same rights as an Olympian sportsman. They are all 'human', whatever their intellectual and physical abilities.
Steven Mithen
Courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which grow up ten years later into domestic hatred.
C.S. Lewis
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
C.S. Lewis
The Canadian spirit is cautious observant and critical where the American is assertive.
V.S. Pritchett
He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world. Though hast my sword. Strike. Death shall be a sweet rest to me. Thraldom, not death, should terrify me.
E.R. Eddison
Never was living beauty so enchanting as a dying Saviour.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Importance of Using Time Well How pleasant it is at the end of the day No follies to have to repent But reflect on the past and be able to say That my time has been properly spent.
Ann Taylor
I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.
Virginia Woolf
The only good thing about that decision, Gatt, is that I'll get tea before you.
Graham Gooch
Deep down, she's a good person, Diana is," Caine said, and sighed. "Deep down, I'm not. But she is.
Michael Grant
Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her father´s neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed. "I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world.""Nonsense, child; you´ll think your husband better.""Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone, "husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.
George Eliot
Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book aside.
Karen Armstrong
It is important not to turn the dead into saints. Nobody can walk in the shadow of a saint.
Jojo Moyes
Even the broken will fight
D.P.Prior
I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalized voice.'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains.' ("Laura")
Saki
The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
Samuel Johnson
My brain, having been suspended in a state of hyper-vigilance for such a long time, just packed in and said 'No more, your job now is to lie on the sofa incredibly still and just work on evaporating, you useless towel'. And so I did.
Ruby Elliot
Never stop. Never stop fighting. Never stop dreaming. And don’t be afraid of wearing your heart on your sleeve - in declaring the films that you love, the films that you want to make, the life that you’ve had, and the lives you can help reflect in cinema. For myself, for a long time… maybe I felt inauthentic or something, I felt like my voice wasn’t worth hearing, and I think everyone’s voice is worth hearing. So if you’ve got something to say, say it from the rooftops.
Tom Hiddleston
The best books...The best books of men are soon exhausted--they are cisterns, and not springing fountains.You enjoy them very much at the first acquaintance,and you think you could hear them a hundred times over-but you could not- you soon find them wearisome.Very speedily a man eats too much honey:even children at length are cloyed with sweets.All human books grow stale after a time-but with the Word of God the desire to study it increases,while the more you know of it the less you think you know.The Book grows upon you: as you dive into its depthsyou have a fuller perception of the infinity which remainsto be explored. You are still sighing to enjoy more of thatwhich it is your bliss to taste.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Noble failure atones for the impossibility of resisting progress successfully.
Richard Appignanesi
The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.
Alastair Reynolds
If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love death - not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. . . . Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him.
E.M. Forster
It took place in the midnight in the University's Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better.
Terry Pratchett
I think what makes life matter,what makes it good,is knowing that someday we`ll die. Maybe death is God`s joke on us but I think it is also his gift.We have our allotted time and the is`s over.It`s up to us to make in meaningful and special.
Philip Carter
We prayed these wars would end all wars --In war we know is no rom
Mark Knopfler
Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.
Freeman Dyson
When something needs to be said, you look for a man to say it. But when something needs actually to be done, you look for a woman.
P.B. Kerr
He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.
Dodie Smith
I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.
Iris Murdoch
All beauty, according to Lady Katchatka, had its origins in pain.
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
I've never felt so bereft and panicky. What do I do without my phone? How do I function? My hand keeps automatically reaching for my phone in its usual place in my pocket. Every instinct in me wants to text someone, 'OMG, I've lost my phone! ' but how can do that without a bloody phone?
Sophie Kinsella