Quotes by British Authors - Page 584

Younger woman says, “I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad.”“Yes,” [older woman responds] “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?
Doris Lessing
The first step towards mastering time is always to make time meaningless
Robert Aickman
Are you always this honest?""Almost never
Dorothy Koomson
The sadness ― the general sadness that squats and pees inside my brain ― isn't over. It never will be. I know how best to chase it away, though. It usually works. Sometimes it doesn't. But I pray and say, fuck it, then. I choose this. It chooses me. I choose it back.
Emma Forrest
All things that live must die. Man alone it seems lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on – otherwise he is useless. For most men, that purpose revolves around marriage and children who will carry on his seed. For others it is an ideal – a dream, if you like. Each of us here believes in a concept of honor: that it is a man’s duty to do that which is right and just; that might alone is not enough. We have all transgressed at some time. We have stolen, lied, cheated – even killed – for our own ends. But ultimately we return to our beliefs. We judge ourselves more harshly than others can judge us. We know that death is preferable to betrayal of that which we hold dear.
David Gemmell
On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as “bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges—curiosity.
David G. Wells
Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.
C.S. Lewis
It’s not just the books Alba craves, it’s standing inside a place that houses millions of them. Libraries are Alba’s churches, and the university library, containing one edition of every book ever published in England, is her cathedral.
Menna van Praag
A James Cagney love scene is one where he lets the other guy live.
Bob Hope
It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities that she has, and not by the qualities she may not have.
Charles Dickens
That name was a sadistic play on the Underground Railroad that smuggled American slaves north. The old Nazis set up their own version and used it mainly to move their people. They called it Die Spinne.
John Pearce
Even the most misfitting childWho's chanced upon the library's worth,Sits with the genius of the EarthAnd turns the key to the whole world.--"Hear It Again
Ted Hughes
There isn’t a name for my situation. Firstly because I decided to kill myself. And then because of this idea:I don’t have to do it immediately.Whoosh, through a little door. It’s a limbo.I need never answer the phone again or pay a bill. My credit score no longer matters. Fears and compulsions don’t matter. Socks don’t matter. Because I’ll be dead. And who am I to die? A microwave chef. A writer of pamphlets. A product of our time. A failed student. A faulty man. A bad poet. An activist in two minds. A drinker of chocolate milk, and when there’s no chocolate, of strawberry and sometimes banana.
D.B.C. Pierre
They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.
Kate Atkinson
There lives more faith in honest doubt Believe me than in half the creeds
Lord Alfred Tennyson
My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities...like the ability to behave myself.
J.K. Rowling
He did not falter, as long as there was a path that led toward his goal.
J.R.R. Tolkien
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Lord Acton
Intimacy wasn't sex, she realized. It was knowing someone.
Sarah Morgan
It might have interested Newt to know that, of the thirty-nine thousand women tested with the pin during the centuries of witch-hunting, twenty-nine thousand said “ouch,” nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine didn’t feel anything because of the use of the aforesaid retractable pins, and one witch declared that it had miraculously cleared up the arthritis in her leg.
Terry Pratchett
What do you mean by sound government?'Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'Then we haven't got sound government.
P.D. James
Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Virginia Woolf
The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real.
Sarah Waters
And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies.
Christopher Marlowe
I was woken by a shell-burst in the trench of sleep. Heart skipping, with eyes fighting light, my thoughts sprang up like a field of starlings startled by a farmer's gunshot, a thousand separate, autonomous specks that swirled into a single united black shape.
Will Wiles
It is through experience that I have lost faith in USA law enforcement.
Steven Magee
That unique Moscow mix of tackiness and menace. One time I see a poster advertising a new property development that captures the tone nicely. Got up in the style of Nazi propaganda, it shows two Germanic-looking youths against a glorious alpine mountain over the slogan "Life is Getting Better". It would be wrong to say the ad is humorous, but it's not quite serious either. It's sort of both. It's saying this is the society we live in (a dictatorship), but we're just playing at it (we can make jokes about it), but playing in a serious way (we're making money playing it and won't let anyone subvert its rules).
Peter Pomerantsev
The need to create a citadel in which to hide from the world is characteristic of people with a schizoid disposition
Anthony Stevens
Picnics are very dear to those who are in the first stage of the tender passion.
Arthur Conan Doyle
If you want the truth about being different,all you have to do is look in the mirror.
Anthony T.Hincks
Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations.” said Hermione. “Don’t pretend you didn’t see him. He wasn’t exactly hiding it, was — ?”The door behind them burst open. To Harry’s horror, Ron came in, laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand. “Oh,” he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.“Oops!” said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling.There was a horrible, swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her. She walked very slowly and erectly toward the door. Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had hap
J.K. Rowling
We are what we believe we are!
C.S. Lewis
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
John Lennon
Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.
C.S. Lewis
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,Who countest the steps of the Sun:Seeking after that sweet golden climeWhere the traveller's journey is done. Where the Youth pined away with desire,And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
William Blake
Floyd arrived in the kitchen and leapt onto Casper’s back, then proceeded to start biting his neck. I’m an only child with a smallish family who had never done Christmas in a big way, but there was something about having two male cats tenderly humping in the corner of the room that made the occasion a little more festive.
Tom Cox
Oh, there you are, Albus,' he said. 'You've been a very long time. Upset stomach?''No, I was merely reading the Muggle magazines,' said Dumbledore. 'I do love knitting patterns.
J.K. Rowling
Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Tom Stoppard
VespersLittle Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,Droops on the little hands little gold head.Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.God bless Mummy. I know that's right.Wasn't it fun in the bath tonight?The cold's so cold, and the hot's so hot.Oh! God bless Daddy -- I quite forgot.If I open my fingers a little bit more,I can see Nanny's dressing-gown on the door.It's a beautiful blue, but it hasn't a hood.Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.Mine has a hood, and I lie in bed,And pull the hood right over my head,And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small,And nobody knows that I'm there at all.Oh! Thank you, God, for a lovely day.And what was the other I had to say?I said "Bless Daddy," so what can it be?Oh! Now I remember. God bless Me.Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed.Droops on the little hands little gold head.Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.
A.A. Milne
religion, the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism.
John Stuart Mill
The human mind prefers to be spoonfed with the thoughts of others but deprived of such nourishment it will reluctantly begin to think for itself- and such thinking remember is original thinking and may have valuable results.
Agatha Christie
She realised with every inch of her being that she wanted Freya; she was in love with Freya. Her mind, with its perfectly rational arguments, had list the battle with her heart. She felt it. It was real. The conflict was torture.
Kiki Archer
You gain inner peace when you become comfortable with the reality of death.
Steven Magee
Always believe you can change the world – even if it’s only a tiny bit, because every tiny bit needed someone who changed it.
Caitlin Moran
There is a psychospiritual disease of the soul that originates within ourselves and that has the potential to destroy our species or to wake us up, depending on whether or not we recognize what it is revealing to us.
Paul Levy
Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.
Claud Cockburn
it is horrible being all alone.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
G.K. Chesterton
Like all young people, you are quite sure that you alone feel and think, you alone recognize danger, you alone are the only one clever enough to realise...
J.K. Rowling
At some point, you have to set down the past. At some point, you have to accept that everyone was doing their best. At some point, you have to gather yourself up, and go onward into your life.
Olivia Laing
I'm sitting here doing nothing but ageing while my guitar gently weeps
George Harrison
Be thrown into a new life (or at least thrown with sush force against the life of someone who is like squashed his face against the window) forces you to rethink who you are. Or what causes impression for others
Jojo Moyes
They dived into the ocean of shadow and smog, adding to it with the fumes of their own aircraft. The goggles were useless now, but Jacob kept them on, in case there might be some break in the murky pool. It was fitting that the Worldwaker had passed through there, with the shark emblem painted on brightly. In those deep waters it could not be seen. It almost felt like it had lured them in. The dolphins do not hunt the sharks.
Dean F. Wilson
We make fiction because we are fiction ... It lived us into being and it lives us still.
Russell Hoban
But he who dares not grasp the thorn Should never crave the rose.
Anne Brontë
What wonder will I accomplish today? And how will it tie in to tomorrow and tomorrow, so that I may live as the hero I want to be? And today how will I seek and find the opportunity that scares me? An opportunity that has me harness some elements within that I may cross over the bridge into the other side of my existence; the one that’s begging to be unsettled, that greets the morning before the sun with a ferocious will to rise up, to inspire, to create laughter and tears from the uncovering of the magical self and the relief that I have given in to the excitingly scary, omega point pull to evolve.
Sebastian Siegel
Only, I felt, by some such attempt to write history in terms of personal life could I rescue something that might be of value, some element of truth and hope and usefulness, from the smashing up of my own youth by the war.
Vera Brittain
It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Samuel Butler
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
Winston S. Churchill
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.", December 12, 2004)]
Stephen Hawking