Quotes by British Authors - Page 633

The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.
Lady Nancy Astor
Too late... everything's always too late.
E.M. Forster
Além disso, somos individualmente o produto de forças que não escolhemos e que mal compreendemos. Não escolhemos nossos pais nem a época em que nascemos, e assim recebemos uma determinada herança genética sobre a qual não temos controle algum, mas que, até um ponto significante, tem controle sobre nós. Essa herança determina, em parte, as doenças a que somos suscetíveis e os limites de nossas capacidades intelectuais, atléticas e morais. Talvez não totalmente, mas o suficiente. Nascemos num ambiente que vai preencher o pouco espaço que sobra do que foi determinado geneticamente, um ambiente que, novamente, não escolhemos e sobre o qual mal temos controle, pelo menos durante nossos anos de formação. A maneira como somos e aquilo que fazemos são resultados de nossos genes e nosso ambiente, que, juntos, exercem em nós uma influência que compreendemos de forma bastante nebulosa. Era isso que os filósofos existencialistas, com Jean-Paul Sartre, por exemplo, queriam dizer quando afirmavam que somos jogados no mundo.
Mark Rowlands
War is like a fire. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about one thing in particular.
T.H. White
Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18). From the beginning God purposed to glorify Himself “in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end” (Eph. 3:21). To this end, He created the world, and formed man. His all-wise plan was not defeated when man fell, for in the Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) we behold the Fall anticipated. Now will God’s purpose be thwarted by the wickedness of men since the Fall, as is clear from the words of the psalmist, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain” (Ps. 76:10).
Arthur W. Pink
After Portia has trapped Shylock through his own insistence upon the letter of the law of Contract, she produces another law by which any alien who conspires against the life of a Venetian citizen forfeits his goods and places his life at the Doge’s mercy. […] Shakespeare, it seems to me, was willing to introduce what is an absurd implausibility for the sake of an effect which he could not secure without it: at the last moment when, through his conduct, Shylock has destroyed any sympathy we may have felt for him earlier, we are reminded that, irrespective of his personal character, his status is one of inferiority. A Jew is not regarded, even in law, as a brother.
W.H. Auden
Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.
Ricky Gervais
She had the world’s worst poker face: her feelings floated across them like reflections on a still pond.
Jojo Moyes
You rile this gal and she'll go wildcat on your ass. Patti (Pat) Canella- Dockland murders/Ghosts of your past.
Alan Place
I glory in the emotionally commonplace
Lionel Shriver
Something must be left to chance nothing is sure in a sea fight beyond all others.
Horatio Nelson
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Andrew Marvell
Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
Christopher Hitchens
I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.
Michael Caine
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.
William Blake
Science is what you know philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell
Cats may walk by themselves, but there are times when they need our support.
Nicholas Dodman
It helped me in the air to keep my small mind contained in earthly human limits not lost in vertiginous space and elements unknown.
Diana Cooper
He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.
J.R.R. Tolkien
It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.
Muriel Spark
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. Chesterton
For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house!
Agatha Christie
And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces.Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Past: Our cradle not our prison and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration not imitation for continuation not repetition.
Israel Zangwill
We read and reread the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them, to reach, to touch the vision or experience which prompted them. We then gather up what we have found there and take this quivering almost wordless 'thing' and place it behind the language into which it needs to be translated. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the 'thing' which is waiting to be articulated.
John Berger
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall fight in the fields and in the streets we shall fight in the halls. We shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill
Besides, I seemed to hold two lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.
Charlotte Brontë
All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.
John Stuart Mill
And yet, troublingly, there is one difference between 'labour' and other elements [raw materials, machinery] which conventional economics does not have a means to represent, or give weight to, but which is nevertheless unavoidably present in the world: the fact that labour feels pain.
Alain de Botton
The experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view.
Trevor Roper
When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.
Ian McEwan
It had been more or less the same for Jilly. Except that she had her parents there to field any phone calls, to accept the flowers at the door and pick up the cards that dropped like tears through the letterbox. She sat before her dressing table mirror in bra and pants and let time drip away, watching a face she didn’t recognise and feeling raw emotions eat away at the drugs she was on. The emotions were gradually winning.
Andrew Barrett
There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?""Are you a young lady?""I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.
Charlotte Brontë
There is a time for faith, Bishop, and a time for action. It would be a foolish man who stood on a battlefield and faced an army with a Bible in his hands. We are here to do the bidding of our Lord Almighty, but it is through deeds, as well as piety, that we serve Him.
Robyn Young
It was the time of night that precedes dawn and is without perspective or reason. It was the hour when regret and fear overwhelm hope and courage and when all that is ugly in us is magnified and when we are most panic-stricken by what we have lost, and what we have almost lost, and what we fear we might lose.
Alexandra Fuller
Experiencing something of the grace of God should always cause our self-perceived ideas about 'Who He is' and 'How He works' to pop.
Tristan Sherwin
It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.
John Brunner
Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?
George Orwell
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E.M. Forster
Those who are made can be unmade.
Hilary Mantel
But there stands the sword of my ancestor Sir Richard Vernon, slain at Shrewsbury, and sorely slandered by a sad fellow called Will Shakspeare, whose Lancastrian partialities, and a certain knack at embodying them, has turned history upside down, or rather inside out.
Walter Scott
I pondered what else I should take for him. Flowers seemed wrong; they're a love token, after all. I looked in the fridge, and popped a packet of cheese slices into the bag. All men like cheese.
Gail Honeyman
how can he love me then not? He went,he ran. And I cannot bring him back. Yet I left the door metaphorically wide open, hoping he'd come back and bang on it proclaiming, "I want to be here with you. Always." Soon I'm going to have to shutit. For my safety and my sanity. Let go. I don't want to. Won't letting go be just that - letting go? Giving up? Admitting failure? Admitting that it is really, truly over?
Freya North
The boldest of the three (thieves) moved suddenly, grabbed Angua and pulled her upright. "We walk out of here unharmed or the girl gets it, all right?" he snarled. Someone sniggered. "I hope you're not going to kill anyone," said Carrot."That's up to us!""Sorry, was I talking to you?" said Carrot. "Don't worry, I'll be fine," said Angua. She looked around to make sure Cheery wasn't there and then sighed."Come on, gentlemen, let's get this over with.""Don't play with your food!" said a voice from the crowd.There were one or two giggles until Carrot turned in his seat, whereupon everyone was suddenly intensely interested in their drinks."It's OK," said Angua quietly.Aware that something was off kilter, but not quite sure what it was, the thieves edged back to the door. No one moved as they unbolted it and, still holding Angua, stepped out into the fog, shutting the door behind them. "Hadn't we better help," said a constable who was new to the Watch. "They don't deserve help," said Vimes. there was a clank of armor and then a long, deep growl, right outside in the street. And a scream and then another scream. and a third scream modulated with "NONONOnonononononoNO!...aarghaarghaargh!" Something heavy hit the door.
Terry Pratchett
In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.
Matt Ridley
Tell someone to do something, and you change their life–for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.
N.T. Wright
In the morning, when she wishes me to wake, she crouches on my chest, and pats my face with her paw. Or, if I am on my side, she crouches looking into my face. Soft, soft touches of her paw. I open my eyes, say I don't want to wake. I close my eyes. Cat gently pats my eyelids. Cat licks my nose. Cat starts purring, two inches from my face. Cat, then, as I lie pretending to be asleep, delicately bites my nose. I laugh and sit up. At which she bounds off my bed and streaks downstairs -- to have the back door opened if it is winter, to be fed, if it is summer.
Doris Lessing
Honesty has a power that very few people can handle
Steven Aitchison
Everything, no matter how beautiful, is only with us for awhile.
Geoff Ryman
What I like about this belief is that it makes people look for a big picture, and think more about how they behave in this life and what they achieve, as it might influence their next lives. I alsolike another aspect of it: that negative experiences teach us as much as positive experiences do; sometimes they teach us more.
Daniela I. Norris
But love – don’t we all talk a great deal of nonsense about it? What does one mean? ... It’s only a story one makes up in one’s mind about another person, and one knows all the time it isn’t true. Of course one knows; why, one’s always taking care not to destroy the illusion.
Virginia Woolf
Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity.
Arthur C. Clarke
Reality is inside the skull.
George Orwell
Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence.
N.T. Wright
So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. (Quindi il giorno divenne un giorno d'attesa, cosa che era, lo sapeva bene, un peccato: i momenti devono essere sperimentati; aspettare è un peccato contro il tempo che deve ancora venire e contro gli istanti presenti che vengono trascurati.)
Neil Gaiman
They had learned that Sorhatani expected the same sort of instant obedience as her husband. She had grown up around men of power and had married into the great khan’s family at a very young age. She knew that men prefer to follow, that it takes an effort of will to lead. She had that will.
Conn Iggulden
You must regard this deviation from your plan as part of the adventure that you sought when you decided to embark on it in the first place...Absence of certainty is its essence. People...who choose to shun the mundane must not only expect, but also enjoy and profit from surprises.
Adam Yamey
Pray, what's the nature of his trouble?" Prudence asked solicitously."Oh, cursed bad news, my boy. That old aunt of his from whom he has expectations has rallied, and they say she'll last another ten years. Poor old Devereux, y'know! Must try and raise his spirits.
Georgette Heyer
Complexity is not an aesthetic criterion. It is a quality associated only with division and organization of labor.
Christopher Caudwell
Scientist say that music can change the speed of a heartbeat. They failed to add: so can a text message.
Holly Smale