Quotes by British Authors - Page 580

Man's chief enemy is his own unruly nature and the dark forces put up within him.
Alfred Ernest Jones
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She set them in long lines. She rearranged their order...
Mervyn Peake
Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose.
Henry Gee
Not upholding a persons legal rights is a form of abuse. Unfortunately, USA government abuse of the general public is a normal state of affairs in many areas.
Steven Magee
Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?
Julian Barnes
The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.
David Smail
… everything was fresh, green and particularly beautiful. Afternoon light, filtering between remnants of monsoon clouds, picked out gullies and spot-lit patches of forest and scrub on the convoluted ridges of the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. Or, after a rainstorm, wisps of clouds clung to the trees as if scared to let go. Behind, himals peeked out shyly between the clouds.
Jane Wilson-Howarth
My formula for life is very simple: in the morning, wake up; at night, go to sleep. In between I try and occupy myself as best I can.
Cary Grant
An army is a miniature of the society which produces it.
C.L.R. James
She felt her strong young body that she had never appreciated when she had it, constantly worrying that she didn't meet standards of beauty and not understanding how standards of health were so much more important.
Jo Walton
Relationships based on dishonesty, lies,Secrets and cheats R not only predictedto fail but also a waste of precious timeand energie! U can’t fool yourself 4ever!
Lily Amis
This is not a book about race, though the disproportionate number of those who fell that day were black, and certain racial themes are unavoidable. It is not a book that sets out to compare the United States unfavorably with Britain, though it is written by a Briton to whom gun culture is alien. Finally, it is not a book about gun control; it is a book made possible by the absence of gun control.
Gary Younge
Pocket all your knowledge with your watch and never pull it out in company unless desired.
Lord Chesterfield
The only Christian work is good work well done.
Dorothy L. Sayers
The general public of the wireless western nations are very tolerant to the radiation poisoning of the next generation of children by their corporate controlled governments.
Steven Magee
There is a certain seductiveness about what is dead. It will retain all those admirable qualities of life with none of that tiresome messiness associated with live things. Crap and complaints and the need for affection. You can auction it, museum it, collect it. It’s much safer to be a collector of curios, because if you are curious, you have to sit and sit and see what happens. You have to wait on the beach until it gets cold, and you have to invest in a glass-bottomed boat, which is more expensive than a fishing rod, and puts you in the path of the elements. The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home, like all the men who now live with mermaids at the bottom of the sea.
Jeanette Winterson
Worry less about what other people think about you, and more about what you think about them.
Fay Weldon
You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
William Blake
Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were an allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him. He had had the same disgust with the Professor Challenger stories, when the bull-necked old professor became a convert to Spiritualistm; it was not that Richard had any problems believing in ghosts - Richard believed, with no problems or contradictions, in everything - but Conan Doyle was preaching, and it showed through the words. Richard was young, and innoncent in his fashion, and believed that authors should be trusted, and that there should be nothing hidden beneath the surface of a story.
Neil Gaiman
The pursuit of joy is the purpose of life.
Steven Redhead
Be realistic, Aiden, I told myself. You know your value to the penny and it's measured in inches, time, age, stamina, looks, and being able to put up with gross and sometimes bizarre situations. Personality was far down on a much longer list, and even farther down came intelligence. You should have insisted on having sex.
Aiden Shaw
I know who I am when I'm wi' Sam. When I wake up in his arms, I'm so at peace I don't wantae get out of bed. He makes me laugh until I cry, he always cares for me, no matter that I'm a maudlin, moody control freak. I look at him, and fer the first time in my life, I'm home - Declan Ramsay (Illuminate the Shadows- Shatterproof Bond #1)
Isobel Starling
You’d really give up your big, swanky apartment?”“If you don’t want to move in there with me, yes.”“But you love your apartment.”“I love you more, dumb ass.
Suzanne Wright
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Peter Ustinov
People and things would continue to exist in a world where I did not, and no one would ever think of me. And, if that was the case, then what was the point of existing in the first place?
Lottie Moggach
If I had the wings of a swan, over these stony hills I would fly. I would fly to the arms of my true love, and there I'd be happy to die.
Susan Price
The internet and online communication is the window into your world - but real life, in person communication / connection is the door.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
The common theme here was contempt: a poisonous disregard for human life. For Vladimir Putin’s critics have an uncanny habit of turning up dead.
Luke Harding
Take care of the sense and the sounds will take of care themselves.
Lewis Carroll
When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
Harry Burns
The mind delights in making connections.
Nicholas Boothman
What was wrong with
Rhiannon Thomas
The tragedy of her death was not that it made one, now and then and very intensely, unhappy. It was that it made her unreal; and us solemn, and self-conscious. We were made to act parts that we did not feel; to fumble for words that we did not know. It obscured, it dulled.
Virginia Woolf
...and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
Charles Dickens
I cannot bear natural light when I'm writing.
Stephen Fry
A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste.
David Mitchell
A civilized society is one that exhibits the five qualities of truth beauty adventure art and peace.
Alfred North Whitehead
Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.
Salman Rushdie
Everybody's got the seam of goodness in them, Kit," said Grandpa. "Just a matter of whether it can be found and brought out into the light.
David Almond
The pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.
C.S. Lewis
I advise people to be careful about taking advice from long term Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) victims. If they have had it for decades and have not cleared it up, then you can discount what they have to say regarding curing the condition. However, they are an excellent resource on the biological harm of electromagnetic fields (EMF), EMF avoidance and low EMF products.
Steven Magee
Some want to live within the soundOf church or chapel bell;I want to run a rescue shop,Within a yard of hell.
C.T. Studd
When you speak from your heart, the words ring true, but as you speak in anger, I'll only shed tears for you.
Anthony T.Hincks
That was what murder was-as easy as that!But afterwards you went on remembering...
Agatha Christie
I sat down on the sofa, surrounded by years of coffee rings and sandwich stains. If the police ever did a DNA test on this sofa, it would be ninety per cent disappointment.
Danny Wallace
Sacred space in whichTo distil, like amber,The best of your love.
Scott Hastie
I would rather see a school produce a happy street cleaner than a neurotic scholar.
A.S. Neill
It made me feel as if I was taking back some control over my life when everything else had been shaken up so frighteningly.
Lucy Diamond
Life isn't just a gift, it's an abundant series of more gifts (i.e. Feather Presents) than one can count
Jean Williams
Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.
Anthony Burgess
In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!
Stephen Hawking
About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.
Virginia Woolf
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
John Stuart Mill
Everything ok here ?"Ryan grunted urging her with a hand on her lower back."He thinks you should mind your own business,"Makenna told the Beta,translating the grunt.Dominic cocked his head."You understand his grunts?"She lifted her chin."I thought it was crystal clear."Dominic turned to Ryan."Marry her."Ryan grunted again before heading for the door."What did he say?"Dominic asked her."Fuck off,"she translated.
Suzanne Wright
Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.
Ian Fleming
An extraordinary lightness seemed to spread through his whole body and the next second, in a rush of wings, they were flying upward through the pipe. Harry could hear Lockhart dangling bellow him, saying, "Amazing! Amazing! This is just like magic!
J.K. Rowling
The choice not to have sex, not to be hurt. The choice not to risk pregnancy. And then... what if she had become pregnant? The choice not to abort? The choice not to have a child?
China Miéville
Lady Astor was also said to have responded to a question from Churchill about what disguise he should wear to a masquerade ball by saying, "Why don't you come sober, Prime Minister?"(Reported exchange with Winston Churchill)
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor
What will you do now with the gift of your left life?
Carol Ann Duffy