Quotes by British Authors - Page 602

And yes, we do have some food. Maybe you'd like to join us? Unless you want to stick with your sheep sushi.
Michael Grant
He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed.
Neil Gaiman
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles today,tTomorrow will be dying.
Robert Herrick
There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and this progress was good. Life was much harder for tyrants than it had been before.
Alexander McCall Smith
The potatoes were starch grenades. The canned carrots were revolting because that is their nature.
David Mitchell
A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already a familiar perception: Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine. We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their land. I have often noticed that the English are greater dreams than the French.
Peter Ackroyd
If you remain calm in the midst of great chaos, it is the surest guarantee that it will eventually subside.
Julie Andrews Edwards
Beds empty! No note! Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care? — never, as long as I’ve lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —""Perfect Percy,” muttered Fred. —”It seemed to go on for hours. Mrs. Weasley had shouted herself hoarse before she turned on Harry, who backed away.“I’m very pleased to see you, Harry, dear,” she said.
J.K. Rowling
if what is true brings us sorrow, / if what sorrow brings is truth
Robert Peake
The mark of humanity is how it treats the world and those who share it with us...
Aliya Whiteley
Half demon, half human, wholly f*cked." ~ Muse
Pippa DaCosta
I want your tongue back.”“And you’ll get it.” He pulled away only to tug his shirt off impatiently.
Samantha Young
I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.
Christopher Hitchens
It's is not enough just to follow your heart. Use it in every breath and in each step. Meet and greet everyone with it. Put it into all you do, every dish you eat and all you create. Then your life and those of those you come into contact with will be truly rich - beyond material and transient things.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
I am beginning to realize, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, that one of the problems I have in life is a tendency to completely romanticize how things will be in the future, which inevitably leads to disappointment because it's pretty much never, never, what I expect
Jane Green
Oh no-"she began.It shocked her to be right. Parent's were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arriety knew and enjoy saying it- knowing always they were safe and wrong.
Mary Norton
Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"..."It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
Frances Hodgson Burnett
What a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion, and sometimes it's only one!
Thomas Hardy
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with his elegant quickness...For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against adversary.For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin & glaring eyes.
Christopher Smart
Kindness is contagious. When we are kind, then we inspire others to be kind.
Emma J. Bell
Her self lagged behind her anger, like a mother picking up after a destructive child.
Matthew De Abaitua
The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observing her they whispered to each other. She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more.
Thomas Hardy
The triumph of hope over experience.
Jojo Moyes
Then a hundred sad voices lifted a wail,And a hundred glad voices piped on the gale:'Time is short, life is short,' they took up the tale: 'Life is sweet, love is sweet, use to-day while you may;Love is sweet, and to-morrow may fail; Love is sweet, use to-day.
Christina Rossetti
Good things could happen to not so bad people.
Mike Gayle
Lines are very difficult to learn.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Stephen Hawking said that his quest is simply "trying to understand the mind of God".
Stephen Hawking
Would Turner have slept through such terrific drama? Absolutely not! Anyone in my business who slept through that would be a fool. I don't keep office hours.
Martin Gayford
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
Charlotte Brontë
It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
P.G. Wodehouse
You must not imagine that Papa or I have the least notion of compelling you to marry anyone whom you hold in aversion, for I am sure that such a thing would be quite shocking! And Charles would not do so either, would you, dear Charles?”(Elizabeth Ombersley)“No, certainly not. But neither would I consent to her marriage with any such frippery fellow as Augustus Fawnhope!”“Augustus,” announced Cecilia, putting up her chin, “will be remembered long after you have sunk into oblivion!”“By his creditors? I don’t doubt it.
Georgette Heyer
Refugees are going to continue to come, and the only question is what we are going to do to help them.
Davan Yahya Khalil
Carnal love is the love of table, not of the host.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.
Tahir Shah
Truth like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil however deeply sown will make its way to the light.
Ellis Peters
Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.
H.G.Wells
Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.
Mary Balogh
For the crown of our life as it closesIs darkness, the fruit there of dust;No thorns go as deep as the rose's,And love is more cruel than lust.Time turns the old days to derision,Our loves into corpses or wives;And marriage and death and divisionMake barren our lives.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
A photograph may speak to the photographer's envy or disappointment just as much as it may reveal his anger or disapproval. And even if a photograph records a joyous occasion, behind it there may still be more than a small measure of heartbreak on the part of the photographer. A small measure of heartbreak? One might think such a thing is impossible--if your heart is broken, then surely it is broken completely. Yet the truth is that we can live with a minor fault-line in the heart--most of us do, in one way or another.
Alexander McCall Smith
On the revelation that there are no gods or afterlife:-"I do not 'like' the truth any more than you Avil, or anyone. I wrestled with it for a long time, for a while I was distraught, desperate to find that my research had been wrong - the more I searched, the deeper I delved the more clear it became that the truth was what it is. After much reflection, I came to the conclusion that though accepting the truth is hard, moving on from that, it becomes clear that the important thing is to make the world we live in a better place. We get one life, it's our duty to make the most of it."~Brael Truthseeker of House KrazicDeathsworn Arc 2 : The Verkreath Horror
Martyn Stanley
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien
But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Hilary Mantel
Always regret the things you did do, never the things you didn't.
Dorothy Koomson
Every moment - something beautiful happens.
Jay Woodman
Sex is like art: if you know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing.
Hanif Kureishi
With horror he saw that her hair was already afire as the tarred stake burned about her head. He held her agonized gaze with his fierce black eyes. "I'll love you forever, and beyond," he vowed as he raised both arms and plunged his sword into her heart.~Marcus Magnus
Virginia Henley
I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind!
Charles Dickens
There was no trust anywhere in the world, O my brothers, the way I could see it.
Anthony Burgess
If seeing her an hour before her lastWeak cough into all blackness I could yetBe held by chalk-white walls
Mervyn Peake
Though I cannot entirely agree with you in supposing that extreme study has been the cause of my late indisposition, I must yet confess that the hill of science, like that of virtue, is in some instances climbed with labour. But when we get a little way up, the lovely prospects which open the eye make infinite amends for the steepness of the ascent. In short, I am wedded to these pursuits, as a man stipulates to take his wife; viz., for better, for worse, until death us do part. My thirst for knowledge is literally inextinguishable. And if I thus drink myself into a superior world, I cannot help it.
Augustus Toplady
You despise the real bourgeois classes for all their snobbishness and their snobbish voices and ways. You do, don't you? Yet all you put in their place is a horrid little refusal to have nasty thoughts or do nasty things or be nasty in any way. Do you know that every great thing in the story of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
John Fowles
I know you're scared, but doing something even though it scares you is the definition of brave.
Sarah Morgan
The young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December.
Charles Lamb
This is a battlefield, Faith! Women find themselves on battlefields, just as men do. We are given no weapons, and cannot be seen to fight. But fight we must, or perish.
Frances Hardinge
The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories. The black was now in the thin child’s head and was part of the way she took in every new thing she encountered.
A.S. Byatt
It is preoccupation with possession more than anything else that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand Russell
Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.
Terry Pratchett
Goodbye, master, my dear! Forgive your Sam. He'll come back to this spot when the job's done - if he manages it. And then he'll not leave you again. Rest you quiet till I come; and may no foul creature come anigh you! And if the Lady could hear me and give me one wish, I would wish to come back and find you again. Good bye!
J.R.R. Tolkien
Men who are certain of everything - well perhaps they are not men at all.
Mark Lawrence
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
Charles Darwin