Quotes by British Authors - Page 685

Research" is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for EVERYTHING
Rayne Hall
The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.
Ashleigh Brilliant
And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right.
Richard Dawkins
Like everything else in the world, it is one man's work.
Rudyard Kipling
Do not dare not to dare.
C.S. Lewis
Don't fuck around thinking you could have done it better. There is no better. There's just not being dead.
Nick Harkaway
When you break rules, break 'em good and hard
Terry Pratchett
You’ve been smoking again, haven’t you? Your eyes look like road maps and you’re in full bastard mode.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
All the prayers in the Scripture you will find to be reasoning with God not a multitude of words heaped together.
Stephen Charnock
The answer to the problem of suffering is not away from the problem but in it. The inevitability of pain will not be met by deadening sensitivity but by increasing it, by exploring and feeling out the manner in which the natural organism itself wants to react and which its innate wisdom has provided.
Alan W. Watts
They’re evacuating the younger kids and everyone’s meeting in the Great Hall to get organized. We’re fighting.
J.K. Rowling
You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of service to men an women upon the earth
Anthony Trollope
With the right kind of people life is wonderful
Mimi Novic
I just want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress
Jojo Moyes
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
Bertrand Russell
My heart almost vaulted out of my chest. I was snuggled against Ryan’s shoulder. We were burrowed under the cloak and sleeping bag, and my hand rested on his cheek, about to swat the stray hair that had fallen over my face. This wouldn’t have been so bad, if not for one tiny detail.Ryan was awake.
Sam Dogra
The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.
Mark Fisher
Hungry for beautiful words, the fox comes rooting around in the hedge, almost too close to the fire. He reads my mind with one glance and is gone. All my poetry is now trotting around the bushes inside him, maybe some day to be partly eaten or left to rot. He understands being alive for as long as he can be, and does not worry about why, or what might happen afterwards.
Jay Woodman
History repeats.
Pippa DaCosta
Family. The greatest loyalty after God.
Sarah Dunant
Bottom lines are addictive behaviours that we make a conscious choice not to repeat. For example, a recovering cocaine addict would create a bottom line that they will not use a mind- or mood-altering substance to deliberately get high. A recovering sex addict might create a bottom line not to watch pornography or not to have sex without any emotional or spiritual connection. Bottom lines are a symbol of our intentions and are very useful at a practical level to address addictions. In many recovery communities, twelve-step fellowships and addiction rehabs, there is also a concept called ‘top lines’.
Christopher Dines
The Best ideal is the true and other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to the holy Three in One.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The 'Wild West' is a good description of law enforcement in the desert southwest USA.
Steven Magee
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women actors on it" says Shakespeare. But actually only the men and women in the public gaze are actors on it. I, for instance, whom — and this I hold one of my greatest blessings while it is so — the public does not gaze on, am not an actor, but only a scene-shifter: the stage is curtained when I and those like me move on it. (Addition:) Or that is how I should like it to be always
Nanamoli Thera
Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.
G.K. Chesterton
When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, “Why all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.” I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you’re a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is “four bare legs in a bed.”It is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong—unless you steal nectarines.And if you protest against this view you are usually met with chatter about the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity of “sex” and accused of harboring some Puritan prejudice against it as something disreputable or shameful. I deny the charge. Foam-born Venus … golden Aphrodite … Our Lady of Cyprus… I never breathed a word against you. If I object to boys who steal my nectarines, must I be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general? Or even of boys in general? It might, you know, be stealing that I disapproved of.
C.S. Lewis
But to elude deathis not easy: attempt it who will,he shall go to the place prepared for eachof the sons of men, the soul-bearersdwelling on earth, ordained them by fate:laid fast in that bed, the body shall sleepwhen the feast is done.
Michael Alexander
The past informs the present.
Fennel Hudson
The silence of a man who loves to praise is a censure sufficiently severe.
Charlotte Lennox
You know, once,” Robert said, “I was working in the shop, doing some repairs on a music box, and it was all going wrong. Da took me aside and told me to think of it like life: ‘It looks complicated when you see all the separate pieces, but the purpose of the music box is to play joyful music. You just have to remember how to fit them together so it will. The same with life really. It’s just about the living of it. That’s all you have, and all you can do: live and be happy.
Peter Bunzl
Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song.
Elizabeth Goudge
Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.
Julian Barnes
I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
W Somerset Maugham
Harold believed his journey was truly beginning. He had thought it started the moment he decided to walk to Berwick, but he saw now that he had been naïve. Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcame them, and so the real business of walking was happening only now.
Rachel Joyce
Observe the eyes, for they are the windows to her soul.
Habeeb Akande
There is a lot of willful incompetence in solar industry that is in the process of coming to light.
Steven Magee
His own naivety taunted him like a flicker of madness.
Jane Harper
True courage is knowing not when to take a life, but to save one.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Don't ditch your childhood dreams just because you dreamt them up as a child.
Carrie Hope Fletcher
He had liked to listen to the exotic (to a Belsey) chatter of business and money and practical politics; to hear that Equality was a myth, and Multiculturalism was a fatuous dream; he thrilled at the suggestion that Art was a gift from God, blessing only a handful of masters, and most Literature merely a veil for poorly reasoned left-wing ideologies.
Zadie Smith
I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?
Neil Gaiman
I wouldn't be surprised if poetry - poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs - is how the world works. The world isn't logical; it's a song.
David Byrne
It may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Your job is to do your job with all your heart to the best of your ability. Life will go it’s own merry way at it’s own pace. But if you do then you – and life – will be the richer for you being here.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Oh, don't go on like that!" cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. "Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come today. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!"Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. "Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she asked."That's that way it's done," the Queen said with great decision: "nobody can do two things at once, you know.
Lewis Carroll
But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?
Wilkie Collins
Moses threw the spent cigarette butt to the ground. It bounced once then lay still. A lazy wisp of smoke drifted towards the reaching shadows. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed flakes of grit from the seat of his jeans. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he moved away from the pipe and began to negotiate a route down the alley. A rivulet of cans, wrappers and remnants of kebabs dotted the ground like flotsam; the waste of nights past, discarded by the nameless, faceless masses marking their territories with futile gestures. Oh, sure, the trash was still emptied these days – there were still garbage men around, but it just delayed the inevitable, prolonging the agony of a tired and dying world.
Scott Kaelen
She shivers. ‘I can’t understand why anyone would want to live out there. You’d be totally isolated.’
tI do. I could imagine waking up each day and instead of looking out of the window and seeing the moor in the distance, you’d be in the heart of it, feeling the wind turn, the storm rage, the rain lash, hear the plovers piping.
Sanjida Kay
There was a long hard time when I kept far from me, the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.
Charles Dickens
And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.
J.R.R. Tolkien
For the purpose of human health, it appears that it is wise to work and live below 4,900 feet.
Steven Magee
I may be naked, but my thoughts are still hidden.
Anthony T.Hincks
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.
Charles Caleb Colton
Kitty waved her free hand to show that she was ok, although she was very tempted to stand over one of Adam’s window-washing puddles and pretend her waters had broken just to see what he would do.
Christine Stovell
The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa
Alexander McCall Smith
Here was a king who saw his subjects as peers and allies around whom he had growing up rather than semi-alien entities to be suspected and persecuted.
Dan Jones
It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.
Robert Greene
The soul accepts the mystery within and all around, immersing itself in it, celebrating it.
Jay Woodman
People do this a lot. They don't seem to realise that the future is just like now, but in a little while, so they say they're going to do things in anticipation of some kind of seismic shift in their worldview that never actually materialises. But everything's not going to be made of leather, the world won't stink of sherbet. Tomorrow is not some mythical kingdom where you'll grow butterfly wings and be able to talk to animals - you'll basically feel pretty much the same way you do at the moment.
Russell Brand
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike.
C.S. Lewis