Quotes by British Authors - Page 7

After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely.
J.R.R. Tolkien
That is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do.
Aldous Huxley
Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Bernard Cornwell
A popular perception that political news is boring is no minor issue; for when news fails to harness the curiosity and attention of a mass audience through its presentational techniques, a society becomes dangerously unable to grapple with its own dilemmas and therefore to marshal the popular will to change and improve itself.
Alain de Botton
You are no ruin sir--no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.
Charlotte Brontë
There's an emergency link to the defence grid, but that's only for use in the direst emergencies." "And of course a mile-long unknown intruder approaching your main source of power isn't an emergency?" Karan hesitated, his chins wobbling slightly with their own momentum. "It'll take time, but I could access the defence grid's sensor logs for that sector..." "I won't tell if you don't.
David A. McIntee
The joy of having no friends is that I can do anything I want; when I want.The downside is, that I have no one to share it with.
Anthony T.Hincks
The distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her laziness to have fully explained before they passed away; the stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and warm on the sandy shore even at the end of November; the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam: - it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future.
Elizabeth Gaskell
I perceived or thought of the Light of God and in it suspended one small mote (or millions of motes to only one of which was my small mind directed), glittering white because of the individual ray from the Light which both held and lit it...And the ray was the Guardian Angel of the mote: not a thing interposed between God and the creature, but God's very attention itself, personalized...This is a finite parallel to the Infinite. As the love of the Father and Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person, so the love and attention of the Light to the Mote is a person (that is both with us and in Heaven): finite but divine, i.e. angelic.
J.R.R. Tolkien
All I do know is that the world has a Chief who was victorious when the powers of darkness struck at him with everything they had. He has the plans today. The darkness won't last forever. There's a splendour beyond.
Constance Savery
Teachers should not fear going off plan if a better learning opportunity presents itself. Plans are plans, but children are living, breathing, creative people, who deserve to have their questions answered and original ideas explored.
Adele Devine
I knew books could see people around them, they ground their tiny teeth, tried to rattle like windows, stories to tell.
Steve Aylett
Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.
William Makepeace Thackeray
It is impossible to control outcomes or results, although most of us have been programmed from a very young age to believe otherwise. The idea that we can perform actual ‘magic’ causes tremendous dysfunction, unnecessary suffering and prevents the development of emotional resilience.
Christopher Dines
But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.
C.S. Lewis
He shrugged. 'I know you're the type''Type?''The type that doesn't let things go
Tim Weaver
When in love or inspired,An eternal kiss from the divineAwaits us all.
Scott Hastie
She may be dressed in black from head to toe, but she is still the brightest thing in my universe.
Anthony T.Hincks
He wondered if the real world was that one in which men fought for policies and principles and died or lived gloriously - or more often miserably - for the sake of an abstract word like patriotism or independence, or if reality belonged to the humble people and the common land.
Winston Graham
[Concerning postmodernism:] The aim of this experimental history is to disturb the ontological security of modern identity and hence to provoke the possibility of otherness through exposition of the cultural difference concealed by, and within, the order of modern rationalism.
Nicholas Gane
Saying of the ProphetTruthSpeaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars.
Idries Shah
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.
Rebecca West
Merlin, do you mind?' It was the King who asked me, a man as old and wise as myself; a man who could see past his own crowding problems, and guess what it might men to me, to walk in dead air where once the world had been a god-filled garden.
Mary Stewart
A kind of wonder takes Chaucer over as he pants up Fleet Street and past the walled orchards and gardens of this lovely riverside suburb for princes of kingdom and Church.This isn't mob action, not really, even if there were men back there shouting that they were off to break into Newgate Jail and set the prisoners free.It's something else. Something he's never seen, or imagined.These men don't loot. They aren't trying to get rich, or even just get fed. They're not remotely interested in picking up a few unconsidered trifles from the palaces they're passing, however lovely the houses are, however manicured the gardens.They're here to destroy. And they know their targets.
Vanora Bennett
What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.
Samuel Johnson
Without the voice of reason, every faith is its own curse.")
Sting
Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?
John Wesley
Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.
Jacob Bronowski
This empty kitchen's whereI'd while away the hoursJust next to my old chairYou'd usually have some flowersThe shelves of booksEven the picture hooksEverything is goneBut my heart is hanging onIf this old neighborhoodSurvived us both alrightDon't know that it withstoodAll the things that took our lightYou on the stairI can see you thereEverything is goneBut my heart is hanging onOnce there was a little girlUsed to wonder what she would beWent out into the big wide worldNow she's just a memoryThere used to be a little school hereWhere I learned to write my nameBut time has been a little cruel hereTime has no shameIt's just a place whereWe used to liveIt's just a place whereWe used to liveNow in another townYou lead another lifeAnd now upstairs and downYou're someone else's wifeHere in the dustThere's not a trace of usEverything is goneBut my heart is hanging onIt's just a place whereWe used to liveIt's just a place whereWe used to live.
Mark Knopfler
Oh, it must be wonderful to be educated. What does it feel like?''It's like having an operation,' said Treece. 'You don't know you've had it until long after it's over.
Malcolm Bradbury
As well as remembering too little, I have seen too much
Rosie Thomas
New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious.
Ford Madox Ford
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Human efforts to avoid or overcome death are always doomed to disappointment.
J.K. Rowling
I think people would live a bit longer if they didn't know how old they were. Age puts restrictions on things.
Karl Pilkington
Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
John Cleese
Had we but world enough, and time
Andrew Marvell
Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. (...)You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibily sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.
Terry Pratchett
The captain was amusing. He said that he himself couldn't draw and proved his words by drawing his own house for his prisoner to see. It was just such a house as the babies drew in the kindergarten: a square box with four square windows, a door and two chimneys, each with a neat curl of smoke. "That's best I can do," said the Captain, laughing.Max laughed with him for politeness' sake, though inwardly he was shocked that an important man like the Captain made a fool of himself. "Vater does not draw," he said kindly, "nor does Mutti; but they are both very keen on photography. Perhaps you are good at that?""Not brilliant," said the Captain.
Constance Savery
Hunter Westley, you can’t just go around kissing people. She’s so cute.Not people Lenora, just you. Only you.
Nicky Fox
Forcing your employees to follow required steps only prevents customer dissatisfaction. If your goal is truly to satisfy, to create advocates, then the step-by-step approach alone cannot get you there. Instead, you must select employees who have the talent to listen and to teach, and then you must focus them toward simple emotional outcomes like partnership and advice....Identify a person's strenths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths. Find a way to count, rate or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.
Marcus Buckingham
All I had to do was keep turning left.
George Robson
Who's he seeing now then?""No idea. They're like funfair goldfish; no point giving them names, they never last that long.
David Nicholls
Funny + sad is what I'm pitching for, every time.
Nick Hornby
The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side.
G.K. Chesterton
The ship told you the guilty systems recognizes no innocents. I'd say it does. It recognizes the innocence... only to violate it.
Ian M. Banks
The Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe
Louis Mountbatten
If you are not working towards something, your life will end with nothing.
Habeeb Akande
I called no one, and no one called me. I was suffocating with loneliness. The pain was almost physical. I felt like tearing myself apart. I wanted to escape from my own skin.
Cat Clarke
Something must be left to chance nothing is sure in a sea fight.
Horatio Nelson
We may properly and profitably amuse ourselves by distinguishing those writers who are respectively 'father-ridden,' 'son-ridden,' and 'ghost-ridden.' It is the mark of the father-ridden that they endeavor to impose the idea directly upon the mind and senses, believing that his is the whole of the work...Among the son-ridden, we may place such writers as Swinburne, in whom the immense ingenuity and sensuous loveliness of the manner is developed out of all proportion to the tenuity of the ruling idea...The ghost-ridden writer, on the other hand, conceives that the emotion which he feels is in itself sufficient to awaken response, without undergoing discipline of a thorough incarnation, and without the coherence that derives from reference to a controlling idea...It may serve as a starting point to say that, whereas failure in the father may be roughly summed up as a failure of thought and a failure in the son is a failure in action, failure in the ghost is a failure in wisdom--not the wisdom of the brain, but the more intimate and instinctive wisdom of the heart and bowels.
Dorothy L. Sayers
And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?
Mervyn Peake
We are not easy to help. Nor are we easy to be around. Nobody with a serious illness is easy to be around. Although not obviously physically disabled, we struggle to get things done. Our energy levels are dangerously low. Sometimes, we find it hard to talk. We get angry and frustrated. We fall into despair. We cry, for no apparent reason. Sometimes we find it difficult to eat, or to sleep. Often, we have to go to bed in the afternoon or all day.So do most people with a serious illness. We are no different.
Sally Brampton
Revenge is a business of calculation, best served cold. Rescue holds more of sacrifice, suicidal danger, and all manner of other madness that should have me running in the opposite direction.
Mark Lawrence
Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"Mort thought for a moment."No," he said eventually, "what?"There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.
Terry Pratchett
A little space of time before time expires a little way of breath.
Algernon Swinburne
There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.
Virginia Woolf
It was regarded as almost outside the proper interest of an analyst to give systematic attention to a person's real experiences.
John Bowlby
Wow. I didn't think I'd ever see you like that."Cam trembled; he couldn't help it. He felt like his body was not his own. "Like what?""So..." Sasha seemed to search for the right word. "Involved, maybe? On-screen, you all seem kinda cold. I guess I figured you'd done it all before." Cam took a moment to gather himself. A phrase came to him, and he allowed himself a wry grin. "It's not the same. That's work, even if it's one of my friends. This is real sex.
Garrett Leigh