Quotes by British Authors - Page 578

The artistic temperament is too often only an alibi for lack of responsibility....
Edmund Crispin
Many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.
John Lyly
I don't want to stay here overnight,' said Harry angrily, sitting up and throwing back his covers. 'I want to find McLaggen and kill him.
J.K. Rowling
It’s only through the degradation of the soul that you can know who you really are; when all else is stripped away, leaving you bare.” Somehow, his black eyes darkened, the venom in his words more deadly than a viper’s bite. “Let me degrade you, Katherine.
Dianna Hardy
I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
C.S. Lewis
She had large, questioning eyes that seemed to draw me in and a sense of quiet outrage that simmered just beneath the surface. More than anything, within her features, there was a streak of wild quirkiness that made her dazzlingly attractive.
Jasper Fforde
If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.
Julian Fellowes
I think about it all the time, about what makes everyone who they are, and if we went back in time and changed anything, whether or not it would make a difference. Would it make us better or worse, or would we just stay exactly the same because we were always destined to end up this way no matter what happened throughout our lives? ~ Evie Snow
Carrie Hope Fletcher
...methinks the older that one grows, Inclines us more to laugh the scold, though laughterLeaves us so doubly serious shortly after.
George Gordon Byron
The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same as the difference between a beautiful and a plain woman --a matter of millimetres.
Ian Fleming
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
Sydney Smith
The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning!
Hope Mirrlees
And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.
Terry Pratchett
The beauty of having faith, is that no matter what the time of day, whether it be day or night I know that someone is always there with me to give me comfort.It doesn't matter whether it is Buddha, God or Allah because whoever it is, is special to each of us. And that is the beauty of having faith.
Anthony T.Hincks
We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
C.S. Lewis
Hunter could only groan. “What are you doing, Kristen?”“Bringing breakfast.” She replied innocently. “Think of it as thanks for saving my life.”Hunter sat up in bed, looking his usual ruffled morning mess, with extra dark circles under the eyes today. “Technically, I didn’t save your life, Mel did.”“Ok, then think of it as punishment for putting my life at risk.” Kristen shrugged, and helped herself to a piece of toast. “It’s all a ruse, anyway.
K.S. Marsden
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
C.S. Lewis
I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between the feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and getting ripped off
Alex Garland
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Desire changes its character by 180 degrees. Often, when first aroused, it is felt as the desire to have. The desire to touch is, partly, the desire to lay hands on, to take. Later, transformed, the same desire becomes the desire to be taken, to lose oneself within the desired. From these two opposed moments come one of the dialectics of desire; both moments apply to both sexes and they oscillate. Clearly the second moment, the desire to lose oneself within, is the most abandoned, the most desperate, and it is the one that Caravaggio chose (or was compelled) to reveal in many of his paintings.
John Berger
As she grew older, Maddy discovered that she had disappointed almost everyone. An awkward girl with a sullen mouth, a curtain of hair, and a tendency to slouch, she had neither Mae's sweet nature nor sweet face. Her eyes were rather beautiful, but few people ever noticed this, and it was widely believed Maddy was ugly, a troublemaker, too clever for her own good, too stubborn - or too slack - to change.Of course, folk agreed that it was not her fault she was so brown or her sister so pretty, but a smile costs nothing, as the saying goes, and if only the girl had made an effort once in a while, or even showed a little gratitude for all the help and free advice, then maybe she would have settled down.
Joanne Harris
Faith can never be lost.It can only be misplaced.
Anthony T.Hincks
We are chained to the earth by a chain of gold, but we dare not sever it; for fear of what lies beyond the drop.
Ciel Phantomhive
She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.
Elias Canetti
I thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn't quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren't such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking.
Aleister Crowley
Well, no, not married as such, but yes, there is a specific girl that I'm not married to.
Douglas Adams
It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck.
Neil Gaiman
The life we’re given is on a thread, so wear it well.
Benny Bellamacina
Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects, and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us
Charles Dickens
What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.
John Brunner
Not that we must always partake of [God's feast] solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It is one of the difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and will to treat them often as lightly as a game.
C.S. Lewis
{She] laughed so that the street seemed full of little silver bells,
Tom Holt
Our vision of the heavenly realm...can sustain us through the most difficult of days and circumstances. It births hope amidst hardship and nurtures faith amidst opposition.
David Timms
You have a spark. It is real. It is you. And right now, it is being activated. You cannot ignore the spark any longer.
Stephen Lovegrove
Genealogy was her favorite insanity.
Trollope Anthony 1815-1882
That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that --I didn't let it-- and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.
Kazuo Ishiguro
It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond.
J.R.R. Tolkien
She had other favourite lines. Our gas oven blew up. The repairman came out and said he didn't like the look of it, which was unsurprising as the oven and the wall were black. Mrs Winterson replied, 'It's a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.' That is a heavy load for a gas oven to bear. She liked that phrase and it was more than once used towards me; when some well-wisher asked how I was, Mrs W looked down and sighed, 'She's a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.'This was even worse for me than it had been for the gas oven. I was particularly worried about the 'dead' part, and wondered which buried and unfortunate relative I had so offended.
Jeanette Winterson
People forget that there's two sides to every story. Of course somebody is going to tell the side of it that makes them look good and exaggerate the rest to make everyone else look bad.
David Reeves
For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.
Bill Bryson
When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,Tears our best hopes away, the wounded HeartExhausted, leans on all that can impartThe charm of Sympathy; her mutual wailHow soothing! never can her warm tears failTo balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our painsRespecting, kinder welcome far acquiresThan cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires.
Anna Seward
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.
Samuel Johnson
I’m a fire-starter and troublemaker who started out as an obscure British tech blogger and rose to infamy as one of America’s most in demand speakers on college campuses. The appearance of my expensive shoes and frosted tips and the sound of my laughter ringing across university quads has forced professors, journalists, directors, activists and musicians to realize something no liberal in America has understood for a long time: emotions do not trump facts.
Milo Yiannopoulos
He places one of his long fingers over my lips, silencing me. I can smell my own musky arousal on his digit and I have the strongest urge to take it in my mouth and suck it as I did earlier during my audition. He says nothing but drills into me with those dazzling eyes. I have the strangest feeling that he is looking into my soul.“Let us see where the wave takes us. I know I am going to enjoy the ride and I can guarantee our mutual satisfaction. Maybe we’ll be washed to shore, I just don’t know yet, but you can be certain of one thing…”I gaze up at him from his chest, breathing in the scent of his masculinity as I do.“What’s that, sir?” I ask, my voice betraying the curiosity I feel.He looks down at me for a long, hard moment before he answers.“I won’t let you drown.
Felicity Brandon
Why do you put yourself in unsafe places? Because something in you feels fundamentally devoid of worth.
Olivia Laing
An answer is always a form of death.
John Fowles
If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right.If they tell you that that is all a story is about, they are very definitely wrong.
Neil Gaiman
Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.
Mark Lawrence
Every society has the criminals that it deserves.
H. Havelock Ellis
Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.
Hope Mirrlees
All hate is hurt, all compassion is understanding
Rasheed Ogunlaru
If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.
C.S. Lewis
And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.
Ian McEwan
I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.
Richard Dawkins
Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.
Idries Shah
If we really want to live we'd better start at once to try.
W.H. Auden
You can take care of everything except chance. Chance can kill you.
Charles Williams
We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half."~ Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst
The struggle you're in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. Don´t give up.
Robert Tew
There is a shade of red for every woman.
Audrey Hepburn