Quotes by British Authors - Page 608

Sati—sampajanna ("Mindfulness and clear comprehension") should be examined carefully from the point of view of the centipede who could not walk when she thought about how she moved her limbs. And also from the point of view of absorption in, say artistic creation and detached observation of it. Absorption in piano playing or painting seems to be "successful" but detached observation or enjoyment of "my playing" or "my painting" seems to have the centipede effect. What are the facts here and what is the lesson to be drawn?
Nanamoli Thera
It's like she had a soul that was much too big for her; it filled her to the brim till there was no more space, so it flowed out through her eyes.
Nick Lake
One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
Alan Bennett
I want for people not to worry so much. Life ain't going to be perfect, but tings will work out. People come to visit and I always tell them not to worry. If you got something to eat, don't worry, be grateful. Just look at all those books. Those books aren't about food. They're to do with worrying about food.
George Dawson
SPIKE: I whistled at you.STAR: I’m not a dog. Why would I respond to a whistle?[He chuckled. He had been around too many club wh*res.]
Sam Crescent
when you're young you do think that things last forever unfortunately they don't Lyra.
Philip Pullman
The Devil always takes back his own.
Andrea Zuvich
Life is measured by the rapidity of change the succession of influences that modify the being.
George Eliot
One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough.
Charlie Brooker
When you have acceptance of who you are there is no need to discuss your past.
Mark Donnelly
A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.
Alastair Reynolds
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and to have it found out by accident.
Charles Lamb
[Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom.
Malcolm Muggeridge
We're all trying to keep up in this stupid raceBut that won't be much funWhen we're floating in space.
John Symeou
They called our arrangement a 'Death Pact' - but, really, that's not a phrase that tells you anything important. It's just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, that his suffering was not going to become unendurable (...).
Gavin Extence
I was cured in my new infamy of all the tired wisdom of age. I would never weary into that tired state again---I swore to myself, I would always be this raw, wet child hereafter...
Clive Barker
I have been looking at the marriage service in the Prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don’t choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal.
Thomas Hardy
I've never looked for women. When I was a teenager, perhaps. But they are looking for us, and we [men] must learn that very quickly. They decide. We just turn up. Never mind the superficialities – tall and handsome and all that. Just turn up
Peter O'Toole
People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.
David Mitchell
O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.''Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' (“The Bogey Man”)
A.E. Coppard
I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.
Henry Fielding
It is certain that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of men's thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the supernatural world suggested by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages. And, notwithstanding sporadic attempts to recall men to the investigation of nature, here and there, it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that physical science made a new start, founding itself, at first, altogether upon that which had been done by the Greeks. Indeed, it must be admitted that the men of the Renaissance, though standing on the shoulders of the old philosophers, were a long time before they saw as much as their forerunners had done.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Might there come a timeWhen we stand over a graveAnd mourn ourselves?Mourn the past, a previous life?Shall we weep for the passing of time?Shall we grieve for unfulfilled dreams?In my naivety; in my beliefIn immortal youth, I sleep walk through life.Someone... wake me up.Please.Wake me up.
Samantha Young
I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. 
Charlotte Brontë
You'll be happy if you'll remember that men don't change much. Women do. Women adapt themselves, and if you think that means they lose their individuality, you're wrong. Show me a happy marriage and I'll show you a clever woman.
Elizabeth Cadell
I think women sign on for some ideal when they get married, and when they realise they haven't got anything close to what they want, they bury their disappointment.
Bella Pollen
Society is now one polished horde Formed of two mighty tribes The Bores and the Bored.
Lord Byron
TODD!" I shout again -And he looks at me -And I hear my name in his Noise -And I know it -I know it in my heart -Right now -Todd Hewitt -There's nothing we can't do toge
Patrick Ness
I believe that the main thing in beginning a novel is to feel, not that you can write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can't cross; that its to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish. [VW]
Vita Sackville-West
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
C.S. Lewis
The problem with doing cutting edge research is that the masses think that you are nuts!
Steven Magee
She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.
Jasper Fforde
I threw my 20th birthday party at Brown, and I didn’t even have to say to anyone not to put pictures on Facebook. Not a single picture went up. That was when I knew I’d found a solid group of friends, and I felt like I belonged.
Emma Watson
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
Samuel Johnson
Sitting cross-legged on her bed, I watch her take out her gear. She’s been smoking so much the room stinks of it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen her do it so often I’ve resisted the urge. It’s surreal, like I’m watching me from outside my body. My willpower is fragile at the best of times, but my resolve is always weaker in the evening.I feel a dread and a revulsion for what I’m about to do, but there’s a stronger feeling, an unutterable longing. I crack.‘Give us a line,’ I say.
Christine Lewry
He turned to her - his gesture a superb compound of relief, remorse, passionate candour and bewilderment touched with curiosity; confidence and perfect penitence. Against which Scylla had to brace herself. Against such bravura how dull truth seemed, and difficult to access. Never had the bottom of a well seemed less attractive. She must hear him first. She could go down later.
Mary Butts
Nothing succeeds like success; children who opt out of school have had a continued record of failure, and it would be difficult to blame the children themselves for voting with their feet and playing truant as much as possible. This failure is not necessary; it is imposed on the children by inappropriate methods of teaching which do not take into account the innate patterns of abilities of these children. A return to sanity is long overdue; we must pay close attention to the genetic basis of our children`s abilities.
Hans Jürgen Eysenck
literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as “literally” did not happen at all. As in, “He literally jumped out of his skin.” No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I’d suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting “literally” willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight—the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured
Tom Rachman
Is she dead?" called Zenda.Sort of," I shouted, "And the pizza's completely fucked too.
Michael Marshall Smith
See yourself as a long-term work in progress, not a short-term project of preservation.
Oli Anderson
Heaven and hell is right now. ... You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions.
George Harrison
The more I learn about life and people, the more I realise that everyone has a story and everyone’s story is the biggest in their own mind.” - Laylla Jonson
L.B. Malpass
... I wrote about ... my childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit.
Sarah Winman
This is what the Problem means,” he went on. “This is the effect it has. Lives lost, loved ones taken before their time. And then we hide our dead behind iron walls and leave them to the thorns and ivy. We lose them twice over, Lucy. Death’s not the worst of it. We turn our faces away.
Jonathan Stroud
Laughter! I remember laughter. I did laughter a lot, he thought. These colours spinning around them are matching their mirth, changing from moment to moment, flaring out as they run and throw and catch. There are silver joy-waves rippling about them
Esme Ellis
They did go on so, don't you think, those Victorian poets, they took themselves so horribly seriously," he said, pushing the lift button, summoning it from the depths.As it creaked up, Blackadder said, "That's not the worst thing a human being can do, take himself seriously.
A.S. Byatt
A feeble orange light was flickering in the allotments, low down near the ground. Laura looked hopefully towards it. It was a huge pumpkin, its flesh brick-red, its mouth cut into a crude gash, candle- flame dancing through slits for eyes. There was no sign of Autumn.
Sanjida Kay
You upped the ante with the wrong vampire, Caitlin.
Lindsay J. Pryor
Death and burial were a public spectacle. Shakespeare may have seen for himself the gravediggers at St Ann's, Soho, playing skittles with skulls and bones.
Catharine Arnold
Think about it: send SLASH receive. Email is the frenzied killer of proper communication.
Fennel Hudson
Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it's against the rules, isn't it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn't.
Lionel Shriver
Each of us has immense potential to achieve what we desire, unless we enliven and enlighten our life with inspiration, bring our dreams or desires into reality we will never shine as bright as our potential.
Steven Redhead
By four o'clock, I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.
Warren Ellis
My head’s swimming. Sorry, sis. I’m a useless brother. You’re best off shot of me. - Burt
Jamie Scallion
Believe me, you're going to have to do much worse than this--in the pursuit of freedom, the innocents will suffer--and at your hands.
Jasper Fforde
Much religious teaching in the world is in reality a confused or deteriorated form, very different from its roots.
Idries Shah
It is often the parishioners, the men and women in the pews, who set the tone.
Andrew Pettegree
Art is the effort to appreciate and express the God who is its Beauty.
William Temple
It wasn't just that feeling of coming home - of being intrinsically attached to what was familiar - but more a case of being so in love with a part of the world that everything else paled in comparison.
Victoria Connelly
For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a great Outer Horror - and his scattered powers had not as yet had time to collect themselves into a definite attitude of fighting self-control.
Algernon Blackwood