Quotes by British Authors - Page 581

I'm nothing but envious that you've been happily married for two years. Try hauling your cookies on a new blind date every Friday, only to have your, already extremely low, expectations dashed as you meet men who look like Quasimodo and have Homer Simpson's IQ. 
Jane Green
I think there are some who live on a knife-edge in the soul, and at times are driven to hurl themselves into the air, at the mercy of heaven or he'll which way to fall.
Ellis Peters
A low voice is an excellent thing in woman.
Anthony Trollope
Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.
Henry James
God demands a conversion of the mind and heart as the basis of peace and security (cf. Is 26:3), not the superstitious veneration of a stone building or a traditionally sacred site
R.K. Harrison
In my ArtI have butone fear:that we willfail to befearless.
Clive Barker
Indeed, a parallel history of Europe could be written which viewed family life and regular work as the essential Continental motor of civilization. Then war and revolution would need to be seen by historians as startling, sick departures from that norm of a kind that require serious explanation, rather than viewing periods of gentle introversy as mere tiresome interludes before the next thrill-packed bloodbath.
Simon Winder
I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.
Christopher Hitchens
It was hard to understand a little and then walk away.
Rachel Joyce
It struck me then that perhaps the bareness and wrongness of the world was an illusion; that things might still be real, and right, and beautiful, even if I could not see them - that if I stood in the right place, and was lucky, this might somehow be revealed to me.
Helen Macdonald
Jazz was about the spaces between notes. It was about what happened when you listened to the thing inside you. The gaps and the cracks. Because that was where life really happened, when you were brave enough to free-fall.
Rachel Joyce
But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly.“Severus . . .”The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.“Severus . . . please . . .”Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumble
J.K. Rowling
While you cannot always change your situation, you can always change the way you respond to it.
Beth Kempton
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness...
Alain de Botton
He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival.
Gemma Malley
I know very little about darkness, Mr Bowden, except that we cannot stop its coming.
Anna Freeman
When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
Zadie Smith
Our perspective equals our reality, tweak the perspective and you tweak your reality.
Sam Owen
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.
T.S Eliot
Beauty and desire to possess have driven men mad for centuries.
Hannah Rothschild
Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality.
Walter de la Mare
Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.
Susanna Clarke
Know thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is man.
Alexander Pope
Man is now a horror to God and himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because God made him so but because he has made himself so by the abuse of his free will.
C.S. Lewis
You´re my son, Ed. You might be idiotic and irresponsible, but it doesn´t make the slightest difference to what I feel for you. I´m pissed off that you could have thought it would
Jojo Moyes
As the sun began to rise, the man reached out to the woman, and they clasped hands. He cradled her, and languidly they lifted themselves up to their feet, their bodies brushing, their eyes lost in each other's. Sensuously, deliberately, they danced, moving as though they were one, their body language smooth as their limbs carefully unfolded. They twirled and rocked, intertwined and separated, nearly leaning onto one another but barely touching, their movements sometimes tender, sometimes almost violent...Moments passed while the dancers held tight to each other, as though their bodies were melting together. The expression on their features as they lifted their faces to the sky was one of unimaginable joy.
Hannah Fielding
No society can work unless its members feel responsibilities as well as rights.
Richard Layard
Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?
William Wilberforce
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.
Charles Dickens
Loving you was like going to war I never came back the same.
Warsan Shire
The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.
George Orwell
I believe this not in the sense that it is part of my creed, but in the sense that it is one of my opinions. My religion would not be in ruins if this opinion were shown to be false.
C.S. Lewis
I am a Freedom Seeker and I choose to feel free. 
Beth Kempton
Advances in technology can be empowering, progressive and enriching. History has shown this across civilisations and societies. But it has also shown, and the present and future will continue to show, that it is foolish, risky, flawed and folly without us raising our individual and collective consciousness and mindfulness to accompany it - to ensure we use it shrewdly, kindly and wisely.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Sing for faith and hope are high - None so true as you and I - Sing the Lovers' Litany: "Love like ours can never die!"
Rudyard Kipling
But then had come the voice that said, Come on, you little freak, wherever the hell you are, whatever the hell you are, let’s get this done with.
Michael Grant
One always has hope for human nature
Agatha Christie
He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs."One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is all right".
J.G. Ballard
Success is the accomplishment of any number of possible aims, dreams, aspirations or goals. It’s very personal and unique to you. Your greatest desire could be someone else’s idea of hell; you might want to be an award-winning chef while your best friend hates cooking.
Nigel Cumberland
Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.
Charlotte Brontë
Luisa rolls her napkin into a compact ball. "I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?
David Mitchell
Creation is the result, but not the beginning of love. Redemption is the manifestation of God as love, and therefore points to a love of absolute necessity and eternity. God is love, not God became love... It is this love that we are planted by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Adolph Saphir
There it was before her - life. Life: she thought but she did not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were, she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.
Virginia Woolf
Creativity is a flame that lights up and ignites the senses
Suzy Davies
It’s those silly dreams that keep us alive.
Lisa Shambrook
I understand the loss of a comrade is something to mourn, but our responsibilities do not end because one has lost the fight. We as defenders of this nation have an obligation to those who've sworn allegiance to us. And I intend to uphold my oath to the people of this land, no matter the cost.
Charles Lee
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.
Samuel Johnson
Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain.
Susan Kay
The elevator doors opened to reveal a very large man brandishing a bloodstained antique phone receiver in a plastic bag and proclaiming, "I found this up him!""You know," said Tallow, "I really have no response to that.
Warren Ellis
A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties.
Harriet Martineau
I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every momentand who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence forsuch a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not justimpossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. Thiswould perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal—except that the believer claims to know,not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actuallyknown. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance andconsiderable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being cantell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate theseterms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than P a g e | 5 of 29Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, letalone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true.
Christopher Hitchens
We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.
Douglas Adams
Although the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make work that "looks like art" and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. Curators pander to the expectations of their peers and their museum boards. Collectors run in herds to buy work by a handful of fashionable painters. Critics stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing so as to "get it right". Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest.
Sarah Thornton
The minister is the parish clock. Many people take their time from him.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to do is give an impersonation of desire, or better still, of secret knowledge, for a woman to feel herself a source of power.
Anita Brookner
...we were different boys, we were brave new boys without a Mum. So when he told us what happened I don't know what my brother was thinking but I was thinking this:Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this? Where are the strangers going out of their way to help, screaming, flinging bits of emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment at us to try and settle us and save us?There should be men in helmets speaking a new and dramatic language of crisis. There should be horrible levels of noise, completely foreign and inappropriate for our cosy London flat.
Max Porter
And now I want love. Lust is no good for me. I want love. His love.
Philippa Gregory
We float in language like icebergs – four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.
Aldous Huxley
Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Julian Barnes
No doubt alcohol tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.
George Orwell