Quotes by British Authors - Page 585

An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.
Arthur Stanley Eddington
By the time of the arrival of Islam in the early seventeenth century CE, what we now call the Middle East was divided between the Persian and Byzantine empires. But with the spread of this new religion from Arabia, a powerful empire emerged, and with it a flourishing civilization and a glorious golden age.Given how far back it stretches in time, the history of the region -- and even of Iraq itself -- is too big a canvas for me to paint. Instead, what I hope to do in this book is take on the nonetheless ambitious task of sharing with you a remarkable story; one of an age in which great geniuses pushed the frontiers of knowledge to such an extent that their work shaped civilizations to this day.
Jim Al-Khalili
Every family has secrets, Reena, and they’re there for a reason.
Renita D'Silva
I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.
G.K. Chesterton
When Victor Hugo was buried, you couldn’t find a whore in all of Paris. They were too busy paying their respects. That was a man – and he still has a show on in the West End.
Hanif Kureishi
If you take each step, as if it was your last. You would appreciate the world in all its glory and bask in the glory of god for in his wisdom he created us and the universe all around us.
Anthony T.Hincks
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? The hearts bleed longest and but heal to wear That which disfigures it.
Lord Byron
If, years later, I do use the slit detector to observe which way the electron went, it will mean that many years earlier the electron must have passed through one slit or the other. But if I don't use the "slit detector," then the electron must have passed through both slits. This is, of course, extremely weird. My actions at the beginning of the twenty-first century can change what happened thousands of years ago when the electron began its journey. It seems that just as there are multiple futures, there are also multiple pasts, and my acts of observation in the present can decide what happened in the past. As much as it challenges any hope of ever really knowing the future, quantum physics asks whether I can ever really know the past. It seems that the past is also in a superposition of possibilities that crystallize only once they are observed.
Marcus du Sautoy
And dimly she realised one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the resumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.
D.H. Lawrence
We have not been created out of nothing, but from primeval "ur-matter," atoms formed billions of years ago that have for a brief while been gathered into collections that think they are us.
Frank Close
So there is nothing inherently subversive about pleasure. On the contrary, as Karl Marx recognized, it is a thoroughly aristocratic creed. The traditional English gentleman was so averse to unpleasurable labour that he could not even be bothered to articulate properly. Hence the patrician slur and drawl, Aristotle believed that being human was something you had to get good at through constant practice, like learning Catalan or playing the bagpipes; whereas if the English gentleman was virtuous, as he occasionally deigned to be, his goodness was purely spontaneous. Moral effort was for merchants and clerks
Terry Eagleton
Even if God had created us, He would never have admitted it.
George Hammond
I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.
Peter O'Toole
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.-Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter, page 299
J.K. Rowling
When it comes to dress, we are supposedly free to wear whatever we want - but if this is the case, why do we wear such similar clothes? Why are we choosing to wear shoes that are almost perfectly designed to make walking as difficult as possible?
Caroline Criado-Pérez
When I saw your strand of hair I knew that grief is love turned into an eternal missing.
Rosamund Lupton
I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester is peculiar — he seems to forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders."The smile is very well," said he, catching instantly the passing expression; "but speak too.""I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders.
Charlotte Brontë
Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes outside-in.
Malcolm Gladwell
This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.
Virginia Woolf
Learning to trust is one of life's most difficult tasks.
Isaac Watts
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
Terry Pratchett
The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just.
D.H. Lawrence
Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled for the worst outcome I could envision. That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at.
James Anderson
The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the flashing of the unset clock on the microwave. He feels as if he had been playing a computer game which remorselessly tested his reflexes, only to have its plug suddenly pulled from the wall. He is impatient and restless, but simultaneously exhausted and fragile. He is in no state to engage with anything significant. It is of course impossible to read, for a sincere book would demand not only time, but also a clear emotional lawn around the text in which associations and anxieties could emerge and be disentangled. He will perhaps only ever do one thing well in his life.For this particular combination of tiredness and nervous energy, the sole workable solution is wine. Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol.
Alain de Botton
Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. Even "humble" attitudes can be masks of pride. Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither recognition nor importance, neither power nor visibility, and even experience deprivation, and yet have joy and delight. It is the freedom of knowing that we are not in the center of the universe, not even in the center of our own private universe.
David F. Wells
Abu-Yaqub al-Susi: the Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
Idries Shah
Yo Mama's so fat, her ass has its own congressman!
Oliver Oliver Reed
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years men will still say: "This was their finest hour."
Winston Churchill
There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man drunk as the word drunk is understood in England. There is nothing objectionable about him; he is simply tired. He does not want to talk; he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter where— anywhere.
Jerome K. Jerome
The mere telling of how a need was met is often like telling of a need, which is asking crookedly instead of straight out. But this much I will say--with every fresh need has come a fresh supply.
Amy Carmichael
. . . you worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business.
Terry Pratchett
The slick concrete reflected the facades of the work weary - grey, cracked and old,but more importantly, trodden upon.
Martin Hopkins
I just think the world ought to be more sort of organized.''That's just fantasy,' said Twoflower.'I know. That's the trouble.' Rincewind sighed again.
Terry Pratchett
Beliefs are collars to which leashes can be attached
Mike Carey
Of all the trees we could've hit, we had to get one that hits back.
J.K. Rowling
Freedom was my daring travel companion on the thrilling ride of life.
Beth Kempton
Better abolish pulpits then to appoint men who have no experiential knowledge of what they teach.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I mumble my vows, Shad mutters his, and I wonder what would happen if I lunged for the door like a wild animal seeking its freedom. I could probably outrun his one-legged friend, but Shad has something of the greyhound about him.
Janet Mullany
The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs.
Marianne Faithfull
Newspapers provided a common culture of aspiration.
Charles Emmerson
Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.
George Eliot
We are what we are because of what we've been
Jo Beverley
It was grey windless weather, and the bell of the little old church that nestled in the hollow of the Sussex down sounded near and domestic. We were a straggling procession in the mild damp air - which, as always at that season, gave one the feeling that after the trees were bare there was more of it, a larger sky...("Sir Edmund Orme")
Henry James
I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.
Charlotte Brontë
In a flash of anger, Midas grabbed a sod of earth and hurled it at the water, which broke into a hundred chained circles. Picturing Ida like the body in the bog made his heart seem to wilt and blow away. His face screwed through expressions.
Ali Shaw
A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
Dorothy L. Sayers
A friendship with the Lord will sustain you in difficult times.
Elizabeth George
Look for the copper tablet-box,Undo its bronze lock,Open the door to its secret,Lift out the lapis lazuli tablet and read it,The story of that man, Gilgamesh, who went through all kinds of sufferings.
Stephanie Dalley
... I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your lordship's cellar, that, although I was obliged to drink a somewhat large quantity both of the Cockburn '68 and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no headache or other ill effects this morning. Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit from the country air, and that the little information I have been able to obtain will prove satisfactory, I remain, With respectful duty to all the family, their ladyships, Obediently yours, MERVYN BUNTER. 　"Y'know," said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself, "I sometimes think Mervyn Bunter's pullin' my leg.
Dorothy L. Sayers
The thing is, after having your first baby - there is no 'normal'. The reason form this is that there is actually no time for normality. Feeding, changing, washing muslins and generally cooing over your baby takes 25 hours a day and there is little room for anything else. Plus, you also need time to nap if you are going to recover well from your pregnancy and birth. So if you are pressurising yourself on top of that to make plans or worry about underarm depilation, you are pushing yourself far too much. Keep everything calm so you stay calm. Listen to your body. Trust yourself to know how much is 'too much'.
Dr Ellie Cannon
Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since.
Emma Thompson
Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it along the way…
Paul Arden
When danger reared its ugly head, He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Graham Chapman
I am moonlighting for the Buddha.
John Burdett
And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped...
J.K. Rowling
The hearts of the noble are the graves of confidences.
Idries Shah
Tell the Queen that there's been a robin red-breast hanging about Kotir grounds. It flies down low and vanishes near the floor. Cludd thinks it might be something to do with those woodlanders. Now, I'm to say nothing to Fortunata or Ashleg...'I must tell the Queen that a robin has seen Cludd hanging about. No, that's not right. I must tellt he robin taht Cludd has been hanging the Queen.
Brian Jacques
One way or another we’re taking your bank. All you have to do is decide the level of persuasion we need to apply.
David Louden
I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
Graham Greene