Quotes by British Authors - Page 693

No age lives entirely alone; every civilization is formed not merely by its own achievements but by what it has inherited from the past. If these things are destroyed, we have lost a part of our past, and we shall be the poorer for it.
Ronald Balfour British Monuments Man
...all that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite.
Tony Parsons
As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
J.K. Rowling
Dark matter is on the move,It's spreading out its wings,It is the culmination,Of all our bad things.It was never in the beginning,But then man came along,And changed the equation,I bid you all...So Long.
Anthony T.Hincks
You're only young once, but you can be immature forever
Germaine Greer
When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!
Charles Darwin
Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
Terry Eagleton
Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried: 'Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!' Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive...
J.R.R. Tolkien
eorum omnium actiones in se invicem
Isaac Newton
What doesthis F. — I.W. mean?”“Initial-slang,” informed Baines. “Made correctby common usage. It has become a worldwidemotto. You’ll see it all over the place if you haven’tnoticed it already.”“I have seen it here and there but attached no importanceto it and thought nothing more about it. Iremember now that it was inscribed in several placesincluding Seth’s and the fire depot.”“It was on the sides of that bus we couldn’tempty,” put in Gleed. “It didn’t mean anything tome.”“It means plenty,” said Jeff. “Freedom — IWon’t!”“That kills me,” Gleed responded. “I’m stonedead already. I’ve dropped in my tracks.” Hewatched Harrison thoughtfully pocketing the plaque.“A piece of abracadabra. What a weapon!”“Ignorance is bliss,” asserted Baines, strangelysure of himself. “Especially when you don’t knowthat what you’re playing with is the safety catch ofsomething that goes bang.”“All right,” challenged Gleed, taking him up onthat. “Tell us how it works.”“I won’t.” Baines’ grin reappeared. He seemed tobe highly satisfied about something.“That’s a fat lot of help.” Gleed felt let down, especiallyover that momentary hoped-for reward.“You brag and boast about a one-way weapon, tossacross a slip of stuff with three letters on it and thengo dumb. Any folly will do for braggarts and anybraggart can talk through the seat of his pants. Howabout backing up your talk?”“I won’t,” repeated Baines, his grin broader thanever. He gave the onlooking Harrison a fat, significantwink.It made something spark vividly within Harrison’smind. His jaw dropped, he dragged the plaque fromhis pocket and stared at it as if seeing it for the firsttime.“Give it back to me,” requested Baines, watchinghim.Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said veryfirmly, “I won’t.”Baines chuckled. “Some people catch on quicker than others.
Eric Frank Russell
The most cursory examination of even the most progressive organs of information reveals a curious inability to recognize women as newsmakers, unless they are young or married to a head of state or naked or pregnant by some triumph of technology or perpetrators or victims of some hideous crime or any combiniation of the above. Women's issues are often disguised as people issues, unless they are relegated to the women's pages which amazingly still suvive. Senior figures are all male; even the few women who are deemed worthy of obituaries are shown in images from their youth, as if the last fourty years of their lives have been without achievement of any kind. If you analyse the by-lines in your morning paper, you will see that the senior editorial staff are all older men, supported by a rabble of junior females, the infinitely replacesable 'hackettes'.
Germaine Greer
Until woman as she is can drive this plastic spectre out of her own and her man's imagination she will continue to apologize and disguise herself, while accepting her male's pot-belly, wattles, bad breath, farting, stubble, baldness and other ugliness without complaint.
Germaine Greer
We fight the same and we love the same. Just because we are different does not mean that we aren’t equal.
Natalie Crown
My first kiss as a single woman. It sent a tingle sprinting down my spine like a tingle panther.
Rosen Trevithick
Are you like, a crazy person?I’m quite sure they will say so.
Alan Moore
During the last six months the little girl Harriet, without her noticing it, had disappeared and a new Harriet had taken her place. A Harriet who looked much the same outside, but was more of a person inside.
Noel Streatfeild
Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder.
Bill Bryson
It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry and—which would not please Lady Astor, perhaps—the whole of the nation’s brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates. Here are the women’s jobs—and what has become of them? They are all being handled by men. It is all very well to say that woman’s place is the home—but modern civilisation has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organised by men at the head of large factories. Even the dairy-maid in her simple bonnet has gone, to be replaced by a male mechanic in charge of a mechanical milking plant.
Dorothy L. Sayers
I have outlived a few of the kids that I grew up with in Knowsley Village, Liverpool, UK. Two dropped dead at eighteen years of age from heart attacks! They lived across the road from each other and played together. I wonder if it was some exposure that was common to them? Curiously, an entire family of three ladies all got breast cancer just round the corner from them, it killed my friend! A little further up the road another friend dropped dead of brain cancer in her thirties. Always seemed like far too much premature death in such a small area.
Steven Magee
Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
J.K. Rowling
Beware Stephen! There will probably be a magical combat of some sort. I daresay I shall have to take on different forms – cockatrice, raw head and bloody bones, rains of fire, etc., etc. You may wish to stand back a little!
Susanna Clarke
Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.
Alain de Botton
You say: 'Oh, please forgive'You say: 'Oh, live and let live.'But sorry doesn't help us.Sorry will not save us.Sorry is just a word you find so easy to say (so you say it anyway).Sorry doesn't help us.Sorry won't protect us.Sorry won't undo all the good gone wrong.
Morrissey
If life is what you make it, the building blocks are your desire and your passion.
Chloe Thurlow
The true meaning and purpose of life is to give some meaning and purpose to your life.
Steven Redhead
My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.
C.S. Lewis
In life there are perfect moments. You cannot plan them - the very act interferes with the laws of the universe - but you must be ready to recognise them when they come.
Chloe Thurlow
This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock.
Thomas Hardy
The moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe.
G.K. Chesterton
Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny.
Hilaire Belloc
The universe is an amazingly fickle and eventful place, and our existence within is a wonder.
Bill Bryson
The beauty of the ultrasound scan is something that only parents can appreciate, but Emma had seen these things before and knew what was required of her. ‘Beautiful,’ she sighed, though in truth it could have been a Polaroid of the inside of his pocket.
David Nicholls
Love hurts. Love is fragile. Love comes like a breath of magic, then departs leaving us feeling empty, alone, a paper cup blowing on the wind.
Chloe Thurlow
Lord, make me less like Jonah and more like Jesus. Save me from being the kind of person who cares more about my comfort, my reputation, and my success than I do about the people You are calling me to serve. Help me to keep all of my dreams on Your altar and be ready at all times to respond with faith and obedience to Your call.
Colin S. Smith
... the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today's mass market. If the twentieth-century entertainment industry was about hits, the twenty-first will be equally about niches. For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator far, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution.
Chris Anderson
A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like throwing grenades and pulling out all kinds of crazy knackery, it was out of control. Whatever. As if the story, if big enough, reflected glory on the teller.
China Miéville
You!' Skeet bellowed.When uttered with just the right tone, this is the universal name for any boy. Accordingly, all heads snapped towards the angry master.
Jonathan Renshaw
It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around one and a light breeze on one's face. And I believe it was then, looking on that view, that I began for the first time to adopt a frame of mind appropriate for the journey before me. For it was then that I felt the first healthy flush of anticipation for the many interesting experiences I know these days ahead hold in store for me.
Kazuo Ishiguro
How wise should we be if, with joyful certainty, we accepted each unfolding of His will as a proof of His faithfulness and love!
Susannah Spurgeon
I seeIn many an eye that measures meThe mortal sickness of a mindToo unhappy to be kind.Undone with misery, all they canIs to hate their fello
A.E. Housman
Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.
G.K. Chesterton
It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell
Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
John Keats
Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.
J.I. Packer
Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.
Lewis Carroll
Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man - he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them - James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted - they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent - until you had to cut them down.
Tracy Chevalier
It is when we are confronted with...poignant reminders of mortality that we become most aware of the strangeness and wonder of our brief life on Earth.
Kathleen Basford
We nurture our creativity when we release our inner child. Let it run and roam free. It will take you on a brighter journey.
Serina Hartwell
Was it possible that Ranulph, too, was a real person, a person inside whose mind things happened? He had thought that he himself was the only real person in a field of human flowers. For Master Nathaniel that was a moment of surprise, triumph, tenderness, alarm.
Hope Mirrlees
Some say compared to Bononcini That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle: Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!
John Byrom
You can’t fight if you’re drunk,” she n
Thaddeus White
In time things thought impossible can be achieved.
Steven Redhead
Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.
Ian Fleming
This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.
T.S Eliot
If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
G.K. Chesterton
Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne’s thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or ‘Eurocentric’; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the ‘radical’; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly ‘committ
Christopher Hitchens
The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.
Alan W. Watts
We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.
Richard Dawkins
Oh may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again.
George Eliot
(About a cookbook...)- What about this one? Maids of Honor?- Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.
Terry Pratchett