Quotes by British Authors - Page 669

We had a policy of "no looking back". Once a decision was made, all members of our team were expected to stop talking about obstacles and instead focus intensely on solutions."Don't tell us all the reasons this might not work. Tell us all the ways it could work.
John Wood
Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.
C.S. Lewis
Beppu (n.)The triumphant slamming shut of a book after reading the final page.
Douglas Adams
For them, it was just an ordinary miracle.
Robert Harris
Well?" Ron said finally, looking up at Harry. "How was it?"Harry considered it for a moment. "Wet," he said truthfully.Ron made a noise that might have indicated jubilation or disgust, it was hard to tell."Because she was crying," Harry continued heavily."Oh," said Ron, his smile faded slightly. "Are you that bad at kissing?""Dunno," said Harry, who hadn't considered this, and immediately felt rather worried. "Maybe I am.
J.K. Rowling
There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.
Idries Shah
The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.
Alexander Hamilton
Now there were stars overhead, hanging like frozen spears of light, stabbing the night sky.
Neil Gaiman
A woman who had fallen out of love with her life
Jhumpa Lahiri
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping the old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him the horror was that he might also be wrong.
George Orwell
Snapping shut his mobile, Dalgliesh reflected that murder, a unique crime for which no reparation is ever possible, imposes it own compulsions as well as it's conventions. He doubted whether Macklefield [the murder victim's Will attorney] would have interrupted his country weekend for a less sensational crime. As a young officer he, too, had been touched, if unwillingly and temporarily, by the power of murder to attract even while it appalled and repelled. He had watched how people involved as innocent bystanders, provided they were unburdened by grief or suspicion, were engrossed by homicide, drawn inexorably to the place where the crime had occurred in fascinated disbelief. The crowd and the media who served them had not yet congregated outside the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. But they would come, and he doubted whether Chandler-Powell's [owner of the Manor where the murder was committed] private security team would be able to do more than inconvenience them.
P.D. James
There are 193 living species of monkeys and apes. 192 of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo Sapiens.
Desmond Morris
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
Charles Lamb
He was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil. He gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice.
Charles Dickens
. . . at eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to becommenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvelous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dreamscenes; darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bearswitness to its unutterable beauty!
Charlotte Brontë
A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile
Lytton Strachey
A game?’ Rob spluttered. ‘A bloody game?’ He turned to face his father. ‘This is your bloody fault! I’m living your bloody karma!
Dougie Brimson
After such an introduction I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say.
Evelyn Anderson
This is stupid. There's work to be done. Tomorrow tens of thousands of us are going to take to the streets and demand fair access to education, and my smashed little heart shouldn't matter. But it does. The whole world is changing, and I just want to be the kind of girl who gets taken in somebody's arms.
Laurie Penny
Garden design is all about concealment and surprise.
Andrew Crofts
Human" is a kind of midway creature, reflecting God into the world, and reflecting the world back to God.
N.T. Wright
Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere like that of a sculpture.
Bertrand Russell
No one knows anything, really. It's all rented, or borrowed.
Ian McEwan
He is in love with the land that is always overThe next hill and the next, with the bird that is never,Caught, with the room beyond the looking glass.He likes the half-hid, the half-heard, the half-lit,The man in the fog, the road without an ending …
A.S.J. Tessimond
Could any State on Earth Immortall be,Venice by Her rare Goverment is She;Venice Great Neptunes Minion, still a Mayd,Though by the warrlikst Potentats assayed;Yet She retaines Her Virgin-waters pure,Nor any Forren mixtures can endure;Though, Syren-like on Shore and Sea, Her FaceEnchants all those whom once She doth embrace,Nor is ther any can Her bewty prizeBut he who hath beheld her with his Eyes:Those following Leaves display, if well observed,How she long Her Maydenhead preserved,How for sound prudence She still bore the Bell;Whence may be drawn this high-fetchd parallel,Venus and Venice are Great Queens in their degree,Venus is Queen of Love, Venice of Policie.
James Howell
People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honor.
T.H. White
You hide it well, but I can see it, Lord Verniers. You hate us. We have beaten you to obedience but it's still there, like dry tinder waiting for a spark.
Anthony Ryan
The things we place greatest value upon are prioritised by their context in our lives.
Fennel Hudson
This is the twilight shift, dear. Neither here nor there. But if you go into the dark, there'll be no turning back. Stay out of the office and you'll be happy. Trust me.
Steven Poore
Smeagol won't grub for roots and carrotses and - taters. What's taters,precious, eh, what's taters?""Po-ta-toes!" said Sam.
J.R.R. Tolkien
They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.
J.G. Ballard
Religious discrimination is not like racial discrimination. One you chose for yourself, the other God chose for you.
Habeeb Akande
I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
When we westerners pray we join our hands, close our eyes, kneel, hunch up and put our hands over our faces to close up our bodies. Our God is inside us, his universe inside our heads. When Orthodox Christians pray they keep their eyes open. They hold their heads up and open up their senses to the universe. Their God is outside in a real world.
John Mole
...innovation is highly context-dependent. It is a response to a particular problem at a particular time and place. Take away the context, and you remove both the spur to innovation, and its raw material.
Matthew Syed
Why do we calculate our forces, and consult with flesh and blood to our grievous wounding? Jehovah has power enough without borrowing from our puny arm.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Hagrid!" Harry called, holding on to the bike for dear life. "Hagrid—Accio Hagrid!
J.K. Rowling
Sometimes the wisdom of the elderly is equivalent to that of a child.
Charles Lee
I must do something or I shall wear my heart away...
Charles Dickens
When an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
Samuel Johnson
Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.
Sally Brampton
When family relations are no longer harmonious we have filial children and devoted parents.
R.D. Laing
The night beyond the window was still, mordant white snow, punctuated only by the eerie dark of the trees, gumshoeing their way along the edge of the path outside. Their skeletal fingers clawed up at the stars, held down by an insidious, weightless lacing of snowflakes. I gazed idly at the moon and wondered if it truly had the power to sway the will of men.
Hazel Butler
He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, 'I am not afraid.
Mary Renault
The worst thing is to have all that clout and not know your own mind. If she says her (Marilyn Monroe's)favorite color is beige, that has to be a definite possibility. Then she will be as dangerous as a Chinese Empress.
Colin Clark
No: I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.""I ask why? I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy of you."She stood on the hearth; she was pale as the white marble slab and cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsm
Charlotte Brontë
When your tears become invisible, disappear
Benny Bellamacina
Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this “ordinary contemplation,” as the specialists call it—is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician.
Evelyn Underhill
The two things clearest in my mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life—which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's. No one has ever raised that curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.
Charles Dickens
Depression! It really gets you down.
Anthony T.Hincks
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in reading a good novel, must be incredibly stupid
Jane Austen
Your trouble has been what old poets call Daungier. We call it Pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud, irruptive, possessive thing-the gold lion, the bearded bull—which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness. . . . The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.
C.S. Lewis
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge, I live alone, I look to die alone: Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge, Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back, My heart goes sighing after swallows flown On sometime summer's unreturning track.
Christina Rossetti
Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.
Russell Brand
Ibn El-Arabi wrote, ‘The Teacher is he who hears you, then unveils you to yourself
Idries Shah
Hatred seems to work on the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?
Graham Greene
She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry.
Mary Balogh
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries Shah
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell