Quotes by British Authors - Page 560

One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it.
Ruth Downie
I was in '78 recently," he announced. "I brought you this."He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title."Didn't they split in '70?""Not always. How are things?
Jasper Fforde
We are not worthy to unloose the latchets of Jesus' shoes, because, if we do, we begin to say to ourselves, "What great folks are we; we have been allowed to loose the latchets of the Lord's sandals." If we do not tell somebody else about it with many an exultation, we at least tell ourselves about it, and feel that we are something after all, and ought to be held in no small repute.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
He swatted at her with his book. "Shut up and read, will you?"He lay back down and closed his eyes. Emma glanced over to check that he was smiling, and smiled too.
David Nicholls
Harry and Hermione are very platonic friends. But I won't answer for anyone else, nudge-nudge wink-wink!
J.K. Rowling
I want to introduce the world to my princess.’ In a state of disbelief, Izzy took his hand and they walked back towards the stage. Happiness bubbled up inside her as it slowly dawned on her that this was real. She lifted her face to look at him. ‘I think I’m going to look cute in a tiara. I’ve never worn anything sparkly on my head before.’ He laughed and tightened his grip on her hand. ‘First thing tomorrow I’m going to buy you one.’ ‘Slow down.’ She winced and stooped to fiddle with her feet. ‘My shoes are hurting.’ ‘This is not news. Your shoes are always hurting, tesoro.’ ‘Do princesses absolutely have to wear shoes at all times?’ A slow smile spread across his face and he scooped her into his arms and carried her the last few steps onto the stage. ‘Of course not. Didn’t you read Cinderella?
Sarah Morgan
I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.
John Keats
Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.
John le Carré
Fly the pleasure that bites tomorrow.
George Edward Herbert
Acceptance, she thinks, is the harshest lesson life teaches and the one most important to learn.
Rose Tremain
What virtue is it that is born with us?Much less can honor be ascribed thereto,Honor is purchased by the deeds we do.Believe me, Hero, honor is not won,Until some honorable deed be done.----From “Hero and Leander, Sestiad I
Christopher Marlowe
I had to make a large number of changes to clear Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) up, it took years to figure it out. I kept on making change after change until one day I realized that EHS was no longer present.
Steven Magee
Life gives what you are prepared to pursue with a strong persistent intent.
Steven Redhead
If there is one sound the follows the march of humanity, it is the scream.
David Gemmell
To see a World in a grain of sand,And a Heaven in a wild flower,Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
The most dangerous mistake that our souls are capable of, is, to take the creature for God, and earth for heaven (374).
Richard Baxter
Every second counts
Dorothy Koomson
The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.
Muriel Spark
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.
Angela Carter
The Shah "had traveled to Europe and had been fascinated by the march of progress he observed there. But, once back in Terhan, this fascination had not been translated into sustained Persian modernization, but rather dissipated in the Shah's intense but short-lived passion for the latest novelties. "He is continually taking up and pushing some new scheme or invention which, when the caprice has been gratified, is neglected or allowed to expire".
Charles Emmerson
Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon.
David Brewster
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.
Idries Shah
That is the word of reality - need.
Agatha Christie
The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.
Alfred Hitchcock
It’s not about the powers, man; it’s that we aren’t kids anymore. Look what we’ve been through. Look what we’ve done. Look at yourself, surfer dude. We’ve done something none of our parents have even come close to. We didn’t take over their boring world; we took over a world about a thousand times tougher. If we walk out of this alive, we won’t have to bow our heads to anyone.
Michael Grant
Give a bull grass, sweet water and a willing heifer and he is happy. But a man is never content. If no gadflies of worry exist he will invent them.
Alison Fell
... Protestantism, in its quest for 'rational knowledge' of God's purpose and for an understanding of this world, engendered its own demise, for it lent legitimacy to a secular science that in turn rejected and devalued all religious values. And in this respect, Protestantism effectively devalued or disenchanted itself, for in its attempt to prove its own intrinsic rationality through non-religious means it affirmed the value of science, and with this laid itself open to the charge of irrationalism and to attack from the outside from 'rational', secular forms of this-worldly legitimation.
Nicholas Gane
In catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature.
Charlotte Brontë
We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.
Ernest Shackleton
Both men had made her feel as if she were the one who was at fault, a typically masculine reaction to a woman who was able to act independently of them.
Flora Kidd
Destiny is like a book. It needs manufacturing, the pulp process, the glue fixed tightly--and it requires a binding, to hold it together, lest it fall apart.
Lavie Tidhar
It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.
Charlotte Brontë
Old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.
J.R.R. Tolkien
A sense of peace came over me and I must have been smiling as I fell asleep.
Harry Bernstein
A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare's tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or dared to imitate Shakespeare's comedy. No one has made any real attempt to recover the loves and the laughter of Elizabethan England. The low dark arches, the low strong pillars upon which Shakespeare's temple rests we can all explore and handle. We can all get into his mere tragedy; we can all explore his dungeon and penetrate into his coal-cellar, but we stretch our hands and crane our necks in vain towards that height where the tall turrets of his levity are tossed towards the sky. Perhaps it is right that this should be so; properly understood, comedy is an even grander thing than tragedy.
G.K. Chesterton
There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.
Jerome K. Jerome
She’s like a cross between an onion and donkey,” Farah said.“Why?” Jason and Connor asked simultaneously.“Cause she’s a piece of ass that will bring a tear to your eye.” Farah laughed.
Mark A. Cooper
The Prayer that precedes all other prayer is, may the real me meet the real you.
C.S. Lewis
Base words are uttered only by the baseAnd can for such at once be understood;But noble platitudes — ah, there's a caseWhere the most careful scrutiny is neededTo tell a voice that's genuinely goodFrom one that's base but merely has succeeded.
W.H. Auden
Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them.
Vincent McNabb
Wiggy & I were drug buddies. There is no tighter compact for friendship. There is no greater potential for deceit.
Pete Townshend
Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase.
Robert Galbraith
The New Age movement, for all the validity of its protest and the value of some of its recommendations, is in truth a very old blind alley. There is a very long history to remind us of what happens when nature is our ultimate point of reference . . . . Nature knows no ethics. There is no right and wrong in nature; the controlling realities are power and fertility.
Lesslie Newbigin
The wisdom of hindsight would reveal that I had no clue how to find myself, no idea how to love myself, and no ability to be myself. Mix all of those three dilemmas, and you’ve created a cocktail that will knock anyone out. Even though I couldn’t name those specific issues that night, I did own where I was to the best of my ability. That’s often all we can do in a crisis. So that night, I looked myself in the eyes and said, “It isn’t supposed to be this way.
Stephen Lovegrove
We'll be there, Harry," said Ron"What?""At your Aunt and Uncle's house," said Ron, "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going.""No-" said Harry quickly; he hadn't counted on this, he had meant them to understand that he was undertaking the most dangerous journey alone. "You said it once before," said Hermione quickly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we? We're with you whatever happens.
J.K. Rowling
Breath (from the book Blue Bridge)Whispering to myselftWith every step I take,Trying out names, for I knowtThere is something yet to be called …..I know it, something up aheadtJust around the bendOr over the rise –tA bird taking to the skyFrom the edge of a jagged cliff – A bird floating outwardsIn silence ……. A silencetWaiting for a footstepTo crunch on stones,tFor a voice to fling upwardThrough sharp sunlighttWith a name…… callingBefore the bird could calltBefore the bird called.Oh the bird was there alrighttAnd sure it took flightWhen it heard me approachtBut it broke my heartWith a mighty croak!So I’m sitting here playingtWith a purple flowerSlender stem, no leavestPurple fizz –And it’s quiet again.tI am stillI am nothingtAnd the hillIs a long, long slopetDown, down, down to the seaFar below.I could rolltI could runI could screamtBut I am nothing.A cool wind blowstAnd the light is naked and namelessAnd the rocks are faces of angelstAnd the bird in the sky wheelsAnd cries to forget the earthtAnd its ancient bones –Oh, sensual pain –tWings…. Wings…. Wings,Singing wings.If only I could begin To describe the emptinessWhich fills me to the brimtWith new breathI might almost lose my nametAnd take instead a feather for my soul.
Jay Woodman
It matters not how long we live but how.
Francis Bailey
He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
John Bright
Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole.
Alexander Pope
Until you know who you are you can’t write.
Salman Rushdie
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.
Jerome K. Jerome
Life is not about finding your true self, but creating who you wish to be.
Steven Redhead
People just don't seem to get me. Don't understand that I need my space. Always telling me what to do. They think rules and routines and clean hands and your p's and q's will make everything all right. They haven't got a clue.
Rachel Ward
That long (Canadian) frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean guarded only by neighbourly respect and honourable obligations as an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.
Winston Churchill
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings-- they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on the ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper. Rain is when the earth is television. It has the properites of making colours darker. Model T is a room with the lock inside -- a key is turned to free the world for movement, so quick there is a film to watch for anything missed. But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, that snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it to their lips and soothe it to sleep with sounds. And yet, they wake it up deliberately, by tickling with a finger. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly. Adults go to a punishment room with water but nothing to eat. They lock the door and suffer the noises alone. No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves -- in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Craig Raine
Another human being, yet another I had never seen before. What did this one know? Was he happy? Was he cruel? Did he worry? The more I stared at his face, the less I understood him. This is not unusual, the same procedure happens whenever I examine a person either on photograph or in reality: in my first glimpses I always think I can read someone fairly quickly, that the snap judgements I make are surely accurate, but the more I observe the less I understand, the more I realize how difficult the art of judging a person is.
Edward Carey
Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson
My mother describes me as 'a real hero . . . just like your grandfather'. But I do not know what to do with this accolade for her son, other than let her have moment, or it helps her back here.
Jake Wood
I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap
Colin Firth
I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive then I believe you are better off not doing it. A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
Richard Branson