Quotes by British Authors - Page 579

What we colloquially call 'feeling bored' is just the mind, acting out of a self-preserving reflex, ejecting information it has despaired of knowing where to place.
Alain de Botton
You've got to ensure that the holders of an opinion however unpopular are allowed to put across their points of view.
Betty Boothroyd
Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn
Bertrand Russell
Contrary to Expectation. A wise man, the wonder of his age, taught his disciples from a seemingly inexhaustible store of wisdom. He attributed all his knowledge to a thick tome which was kept in a place of honour in his room. The sage would allow nobody to open the volume. When he died, those who had surrounded him, regarding themselves as his heirs, ran to open the book, anxious to possess what it contained. They were surprised, confused and disappointed when they found that there was writing on only one page. They became even more bewildered and then annoyed when they tried to penetrate the meaning of the phrase which met their eyes. It was: 'When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
Idries Shah
I ask Laurie if it's possible to get trained fish. Lindsay says this is how we know I've never produced a movie.
Emma Thompson
I'm a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive.
Elizabeth Taylor
Christianity is not a doctrine, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For 'consciousness of sin' is a real event an so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What are you dreams, Twylla?”“I – I have none. I have all I want.”“I don’t believe that. You must have some dreams – everyone does.” “I want…I want to be happy,” I say, realizing at once that it’s a stupid thing to say. But to my surprise he’s nodding, a smile tugging at his lips. “I want to be happy too.
Melinda Salisbury
We all know that 97% of the money in the world doesn't exist and that's thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, or should I say fictional reserve banking." He grinned at his own joke, his smile partly hidden by his hair, "Money is no longer attached to the Gold Standard, therefore, it isn't based on anything. So when it says, 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand ten pounds,' I have to ask, ten pounds of what?" Silence. "The world is owned by the rich shareholder, the rich superstar, the rich industrialist, the rich aristocracy." He was now marching around the stage, "It doesn't matter who or what they are, if they're rich then they own a part of the world, but they only own it because they've got lots of money. Which means they own part of the 97% of the world’s fictional money, the pretend money that only exists on a computer." He stopped abruptly and stared out at the audience, "Which means that if they cashed in their fictional nonexistent money they'd get something like this ten pound note offering to pay the bearer the sum of ten pounds of nothing." He held the note aloft, "Which means the rich have managed to buy the entire world with paper nothing that has a value of nothing and we've let them do it.
Arun D. Ellis
You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
Margery Williams Bianco
A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud.
G.K. Chesterton
For a second, my hand touched yours, but that second is gone, and cannot be seen, heard or felt ever again. This second is gone, too, the moment in which I spoke by your side. It is dead. Let it die.
Claire North
The zoologist is delighted by the differences between animals, whereas the physiologist would like all animals to work in fundamentally the same way.
Alan Hodgkin
We always hurt the ones we love, darling. You’ll have to tell her you’re sorry. And mean it and give her time. - Grace Trevelyan-Grey to Christian Grey
E.L. James
What's life without a little risk?
Jk Rowling
Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. This book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
He saw a cross on a wall with another cross behind it, a shadow cross, the shadow of what God left behind when God was gone, the continued need for joy and beauty, a commitment to hope where there appeared to be none, and to grace in spite of everything.
Richard Rayner
Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
Matthew Arnold
Your fortune teller cursed me. Foul spirits haunt every supermarket I go to. I can't show my face in Morrisons.
Steven Poore
No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusionsabout himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when ourappointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception.
Joseph Conrad
Human nature is always interesting... And it's curious to see how certain types always tend to act in exactly the same way." - Miss Marple, The Herb of Death, Pg. 167
Agatha Christie
There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat.These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.)There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you.. . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers.
Charles Stross
The strangest experiences in life are apt to lose their effect if dwelt upon long enough. ("Furze Hollow")
A.M. Burrage
How?’ a still shaken Nechtan demanded.Britha had always hated to give magic as an answer. More often than not, another answer could be found.‘Magic,’ she said.
Gavin G. Smith
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.
G.K. Chesterton
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.
Evelyn Underhill
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
Angela Carter
If there is to be any hope for the world, indeed if you really want to find satisfaction and happiness in your life, you must regard the return you will receive as a secondary consideration, if a consideration at all ……seek money first and you will ruin your land, or betray your profession…
Sir James Darling
When facing a decision that stands a 50/50 chance of being correct, the choice made will be wrong 80% of the time. Rick Coxen
Frederick L. Coxen
God Hold us to that which drew us first, when the Cross was the attraction, and we wanted nothing else.
Amy Carmichael
What had happened was that the formal pattern of black-and-white, mistress-and-servant, had been broken by the personal relation; and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.
Doris Lessing
Well, bugger me," cried Jonas when he saw Richie with his bow, "is it Robin Hood or Adam Bell come to save us? Nay, it's Richie O'the Bow, hero of ballad and song!
David Pilling
Who can tell? It may be that there must always be growth - and that if one does not grow kinder and wiser and greater, then the growth must be the other way, fostering the evil things. Or it may be that the life they all led was too shut in, too folded back upon itself - without breadth or vision. Or it may be that, like a disease of crops, it is contagious, that first one and then another is sickened.
Agatha Christie
His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there.
Ian Fleming
Rose's work of art took her all day, including two playtimes, story time, and most of lunch.At the end of school it was stolen from her by the wicked teacher who had pretended to be so interested."Beautiful- what-is-it?" she asked as she pinned it high on the wall, where Rose could not reach."They take your pictures," said Indigo,... when he finally made out what all the roaring and stamping was about. "They do take them.... Why do you want that picture so much?" he asked Rose."It was my best ever," said Rose furiously. "I hate school. I hate everyone in it. I will kill them all when I'm big enough.""You can't just go round killing people," Indigo told her...
Hilary McKay
Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
Alan W. Watts
Fuck you, diet,” said Stuart. “The diet schmeer is the end of civilisation as we know it.
David Pratt
The existence of homosexuality, not as a circumstantial matter of passing sexual whim, but as a shared condition and identity, raises the intriguing possibility of homosexual culture, or at least of a minority subculture with sexual identity as its base. At the very least, by sympathetic identification with cultural texts which appeared to be affirmative, homosexual people saw a way to shore up their self-respect in the face of constant moral attack, and they found materials with which to justify themselves not only to each other but also to those who found their very existence, let alone their behaviour, unjustifiable.
Gregory Woods
It is interesting to wonder whether taxonomists of the future may regret the way our generation messed around with genomes.
Richard Dawkins
Your stepfather? I'd like to meet him."Oh no... why?"I'm not sure that's a good idea."Christian unlocks the door, his mouth in a grim line."Are you ashamed of me?""No!" It's my turn to sound exasperated. "Introduce you to my dad as what? 'This is the man who deflowered me and wants to start a BDSM relationship'. You're not wearing running shoes.
E.L. James
King David had gotten old. He was so cold and frail that the court appointed a young woman to snuggle with him in his bed. No, they didn't have sex. Though the court did make a point of hiring someone beautiful, just to put a little sizzle in his chicken.
Mark Russell
Half the time he seems autistic, the rest of the time he's like a lizard jacked full of lithium and speed. These things do not promote love in most of us.
Warren Ellis
The "silly" question is the first intimation of some totally new development
Alfred North Whitehead
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
G.K. Chesterton
I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But (...) we must see all scars as beauty. (...) Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.
Chris Cleave
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPenitent: Someone who has been made incapable of enjoying himself.
Idries Shah
I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls.
J.K. Rowling
There is nothing to be lost by experimenting with the sickened human mind and body.
Steven Magee
The thought went through my mind that we should film ourselves in our sexual act, and project our frenzied copulation permanently onto the walls of the tea-room, as a lesson to wake up the boring people who drank tea here, and to show them what life was really all about.
Fiona Thrust
Love itself is what is left over when being "in love" has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Louis de Bernières
The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately. The converts had known a first coming. And then? And then! That was the trouble — the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as universal and as durable — as time.
Charles Williams
Life at H.I.V.E. may have its attractions after all, Otto thought. Friends, as they say, may come and go, but high-powered laser weapons are forever.
Mark Walden
The risks involved in the pursuit of magic are--put simply--either getting frightened by unpleasant perceptions or becoming deluded. Unfortunately it is possible to suffer from both symptoms at the same time.
Philip Carr-Gomm
How may a mortal, face and defeat the Kraken
Beverley Cross
Do you see this lantern? cried Syme in a terrible voice.'Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind, you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.
G.K. Chesterton
He tastes of white wine and apple pie and Christian. I run my fingers through his hair, holding him to me while our tongues explore and curl and twist around each other, my blood heating in my veins.We're breathless when Christian pulls away.
E.L. James
He did not wish to be divine. If there had never been a God, the emperor thought, it might have been easier to work out what goodness was. This business of worship, of the abnegation of self in the face of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail. Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.
Salman Rushdie
Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them...go around them...take evasive action.
Geraldine McCaughrean
The irony is, nothing is more frightening than being frightened.
Neel Burton
That night I think we were trying to fight against death, against boredom and banality, against everything that made us cry and stare at our futures full in the face with dread. We drank and played games to be in the now, to be in each moment as hard as we could, because the moment was all that mattered, at the end of it all. I remember I felt intoxicated on life and darkness. I felt powerful. It was the most natural thing in the world. This was why we were alive– to be powerful and free.
Laure Eve