Quotes by British Authors - Page 618

How well it was said," answered the fisherman, "that swords can be kept off with shields but the Eye of Wisdom pierces through every defense!
C.S. Lewis
Extreme night shift work in high altitude astronomy is easily avoidable by using a split night shift where the first night shift starts before sunset and finishes at midnight and the second night shift starts with a new fresh person working through to after sunrise.
Steven Magee
Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid
J.K. Rowling
But how do you come ‘offline’ when so much of our daily lives is moving ‘online’? Every month new sites and online services are launched. If you need to check anything – about a new school for your children, medical treatment, tourist destination or recipe – you go online. Bill Gates put it so well when he called the Internet the ‘town square for the global village of tomorrow’.Could you spend a week or even a day without reading your emails, using social media or going online? Someone recently joked with me that having Internet access is more important than having food or water.
Nigel Cumberland
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
Charlotte Brontë
She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.
Charles Dickens
Christ loved the sons of men before there were sons of men, and me before there was me. If he was going to get tired of me, he would have done so before now.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Most of us have no real loves and no real hatreds. Blessed is love less blessed is hatred but thrice accursed is that indifference which is neither one nor the other.
Mark Rutherford
Gee, I'm sorry I didn't hear you in all this rain. Go ahead in, please."Anthony Perkin's Norman BatesTalking To Janet Leigh's Marion Crane.
Alfred Hitchcock
If we are ever going to achieve a rational approach to organizing our affairs, we have to dignify the process of admitting to being wrong. It doesn't help matters at all if the media, or your friends, accuse you of "flip-flopping" when you change your mind. Changing our minds is our hope for the future.
Brian Eno
A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey.
Banksy
What is it about me that gets them all crying? It’s not the end of the world.
Diane Samuels
Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E.M. Forster
I sat down and knitted for some time - my usual resource under discouraging circumstances.
Isabella L. Bird
There is no wisdom for a man without harmony, and without harmony there is no contemplation. Without contemplation there cannot be peace, and without peace can there be joy?
Juan Mascaró
Maybe from as early as when you're five or six, there's been a whisper going at the back of your head, saying: “One day, maybe not so long from now, you'll get to know how it feels.” So you're waiting, even if you don't quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.
Kazuo Ishiguro
But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it.")
Neil Gaiman
It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.
Jerome K. Jerome
You must lose a fly to catch a trout.
George Edward Herbert
There are countries of the world, and regions of one's own mind, where it is unwise to travel.
Chris Cleave
We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare.
Arthur Machen
young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term effects which persistBowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., Boston, M., and Rosenbluth, D. (1956). The effects of mother-child separation: A follow-up study. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 29, 211-249.
John Bowlby
So she became a woman who held her head high, not in arrogance, or contempt, but because she knew that it was a form of cowardice to make a choice and then pretend you didn’t really make it
Kamila Shamsie
Questions are as supple as willow wands, it's easy to brush by them and slip them aside, and no one the worse for it.
Ellis Peters
For someone to be perfect, they must be real, however imperfect they are.
Johnny Rich
The night darkens, the stars unfriendly, the cold a knife upon her neck - but Nella waits, until she can no longer difference between Johannes and the darkness that carries him away.
Jessie Burton
That is the Proctor. He is our Cerberus; he has to keep all undergraduates in good order." "What a task! He ought to have three heads.
Thomas Hughes
Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.
N.T. Wright
Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
C.S. Lewis
When shall I be past these soul-tormenting fears, and cares, and griefs, and passions? When shall I be out of this frail, this corruptible, ruinous body; this soul-contradicting, insnaring, deceiving flesh? When shall I be out of this vain and vexatious world, whose pleasures are mere deluding dreams and shadowsl whose miseries are real, numerous, and uncessant? How long shall I see the church of Christ lie trodden under the feet of persecutors ; or else, as a ship in the hands of foolish guides, though the supreme Maker doth moderate all for the best? (642-3)
Richard Baxter
The weak mind is irritated at a little: the strong mind bears it like a rock which moveth not, though a thousand breakers dash upon it, and cast their pitiful malice in spray upon its summit.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
My dreams are crowded with people, as though to compensate for the solitariness of my waking hours.
Anna Lyndsey
Yeah, well, food's one of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfigurations," said Ron, to general astonishment.
J.K. Rowling
Men of much depth of mind can bear a great deal of counsel for it does not easily deface their own character nor render their purposes indistinct.
Arthur Helps
Life is the opportunity to create moments of wonder.
Steven Redhead
I assure you, I've come to one of those natural breaks in the book, where one can walk away and let things go on working in the subconscious. It's true, don't look so unbelieving. It means I can afford to tear myself away from my view of the pigsties and go out on parole, as much as I like and you'll put up with.
Mary Stewart
Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely," said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. "But I must say, Ginevra's dress is far too low-cut."Ginny glanced round, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again.
J.K. Rowling
She had shown him by her independence how it was only fear that held people together. The fear of being alone and the fear of being different.
Mervyn Peake
Children get food shelter pocket money longholidays and love, all of it apparently free gratis, and most of the little fools think it's a sort of compensation for having been born. 'There are no strings on me!' They sang; but I, pinnoccio, saw the strings. Parents are impelled by the profit motive - nothing more, nothing less. For their attentions, they expected, from me, the immense dividend of greatness.
Salman Rushdie
Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.
Joe Abercrombie
We are the choice elected fewLet all the rest be damnedThere is room enough in hell for youWe won’t have heaven crammed!
Roland H. Bainton
Anthony imagined a time before all that - a time when people sipped Earl Grey tea on a breeze cooled veranda and looked out upon endless countryside.
Alan Gibbons
Perhaps she would never really know him. A year and a half ago that though would have been unbearable to her, but now she had learnt to live with uncertainty, even to love it.
Daisy Goodwin
[H]ow was I supposed to get excited about the oppression of females if they couldn't be trusted to stay upright during the final minutes of a desperately close promotion campaign?
Nick Hornby
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Sarah Williams
What will people of the future think of us? Will they say, as Roger Williams said of some of the Massachusetts Indians, that we were wolves with the minds of men? Will they think that we resigned our humanity? They will have that right.
C.P. Snow
My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh.But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain.
Charlie Chaplin
We're fighting for unhappiness?" Noah asked skeptically. "It sounds a bit crazy when you put it that way."Nijinsky laughed, delighted. "Oh, it is." Then, serious again, he said, "We fight for the right to be what we choose,to feel what we choose. Even if what we choose seems crazy to others.""If it's all the same to you, I'll fight for revenge," Sadie said.Nijinsky's eyes glittered. "Oh, yes. That's fine with me.
Michael Grant
The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.
Christopher Hitchens
- Please. Don't switch off my mind by attempting to straighten me. Listen and understand, and when you feel contempt don't express it, at least not verbally, at least not to me.(Silence.)- I don't feel contempt.- No?- No. It's not your fault.- It's not your fault. That's all I ever hear, it's not your fault, it's an illness, it's not your fault, I know it's not my fault. You've told me that so often I'm beginning to think it is my fault.- It's not your fault.- I KNOW.- But you allow it.
Sarah Kane
Some who grow dull religious straight commenceAnd gain in morals what they lose in sense.
Alexander Pope
The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion
Anthony Trollope
I cannot believe I have been duped, not once but twice. My three years gaining a degree in psychology was clearly a waste of time. I might as well have studied Klingon.
Susan Lodge
Logic in all its infinite potential, is the most dangerous of vices. For one can always find some form of logic to justify his action, and rest comfortably in the assurance, that what he did abides by reason. That is why, for us brittle beings, Intention is the only true weapon of peace.
Ilyas Kassam
Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.
Lionel Shriver
It comes over me that I had then a strange alter ego deep down somewhere inside me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight bud, and I just took the course, I just transferred him to the climate, that blighted him once and for ever.
Henry James
Coffee’s the elixir of life.
David Mitchell
They need a social mechanism to make us require conformity of one other, and the best way to do that is to provide a mechanism to make us punish our own deviants.
Charles Stross
You will come away bruised.You will come away bruisedbut this will give you poetry.
Yrsa Daley-Ward
As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.
Tom Stoppard