Quotes by British Authors - Page 734

You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know - You have qualities which I had not supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees any thing like it - but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return.” (326)
Jane Austen
Who's to say? Life is not, as we are taught, a matter of seeking answers, but rather learning which are the questions we should ask.
Kate Mosse
Faith may be relied upon to produce sustained action and more rarely sustained contemplation.
Aldous Huxley
She had not told her mother about Denys, but she had a suspicion that Mrs. Shannon knew all about it nevertheless. It was unlike her not to want to satisfy her curiosity when she came upon her daughter sobbing in various parts of the house. She had asked no questions; she had simply donned the role of the heavily understanding mother, and had done a lot of shoulder-patting and given Mary an expensive evening dress from the shop. Mary had no idea how she knew, but was certain that if she had not known she would never have rested until she did.
Monica Dickens
People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
Patrick Ness
Your imagination can take you to the best and worst places. It is a ship on a sea of dreams and it's up to you to steer it.
Aliya Whiteley
I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
Wilkie Collins
Faith is a higher faculty than reason.
Henry Christopher Bailey
For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.
Charles Dickens
I couldn't decide what kind of person she was, whether she was one of those insects that look exactly like wasps but aren't . . . I just wanted to know if she would sting.
Olivia Sudjic
If I could be who you wanted, all the time
Radiohead
He is the biggest asshole on the planet,” Jarod says. “And in a planet that’s currently drowning in assholes, that’s saying a lot.
Siobhan Davis
We spent all those years talking about stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different and it broke both of our hearts.
Nick Hornby
To get what we want we must be subtle as snakes; more deadly, more cunning, more patient, more mean. Think of the serpent, how it slithers through the garden. It's such a beautiful creature, slow and delicate, rarely seen but effective, low, and not loved, but gloriously efficient! The serpent is now our model; we must pattern our work after him. So go to your old friends and stand by their sides. Pretend you want to help them while whispering deceits in their ears. Only lie when you have to. Speak the truth when you can; for the truth, once it's twisted, is the most effective tool we have. Coat your lies with enough truth, and they will swallow it down.Now listen to me, people, for this is the key - evil can be twisted into virtue if you phrase it just right. Any vice is acceptable if you cloak it as an issue of freedom. Any immorality is worth fighting for it you tell them they are fighting for choice, if you wrap it in the mantle of privacy and freedom. So take their moral agency and turn it on them. But be patient. . . be patient. . . it takes time to turn the truth upside down.
Chris Stewart
Fred and George exchanged looks."You don't mind if we don't kiss you, do you, Ron?" said Fred in a falsely anxious voice. "We could curtsy, if you like," said George. "Oh, shut up," said Ron, scowling at them.
J.K. Rowling
Live now, die later!
Stewart Home
You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
C.S. Lewis
I dream in fire but work in clay.
Arthur Machen
Whoever does decide to awaken should put their whole effort, attention, and life into it, in order to make it succeed.
Belsebuub
Remember in any case, that not only the Adept, but anyone with the smallest capacity for Adeptship, is fundamentally an Artist; he will certainly not possess any of those bourgeois "virtues" which are just so many reactions to Blue Funk.
Aleister Crowley
..and though my internal organs were Barry White, my stamina had skipped CDs and decided to be more Vanilla Ice.
Matthew Williamson
I swallowed all the doubt and all the disappointment and all the anger and they were almost too big, like vitamin pills that are difficult to get down even with water.
Annabel Pitcher
North and South has both met and made kind o' friends in this big smoky place.
Elizabeth Gaskell
I can never resist telling people good news. I mean, why not brighten someone else's life too?
Sophie Kinsella
Prue hadn't really been in love with Fabian. Indeed, it was obvious that at times she found him both boring and irritating. But wasn't that what so many marriages were - finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring, or irritating?
Barbara Pym
There ought to be a law that allows eavesdroppers to sue.
Gill McKnight
Nothing of worthy or weight can be achieved with half a mind with a faint heart and with a lame endeavor.
Isaac Barrow
To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.
Richard Baxter
Her voice was now so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless..
J.K. Rowling
Organised religion generally gets in the way of spiritual experience.
Alan McCluskey
Meticulousness is the better part of serendipity.
Reginald Hill
Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth E. Boulding
Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.
C.S. Lewis
Always remember that you are an Englishman and therefore have drawn first prize in the lottery of life.
Cecil Rhodes
Sunshine is delicious rain is refreshing wind braces us up snow is exhilarating there is really no such thing as bad weather only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin
Thank goodness it only lasted a minute or so.The inhalant, that is. The sex was rather longer
Belle de Jour
By increasing the size of the keyhole today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
Bertrand Russell
When life throws difficulties at us and the mind is restless, emotional resilience will see us through challenging times. We can work through tempestuous emotions and self-doubt and come through them unharmed and avoid self-sabotage and self-harm.
Christopher Dines
Laughter is much better than anger.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Compassion is even more powerful than courage. Sure, with courage you can conquer a world - but only with compassion can you heal and build it.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Madam Pince, our librarian, tells me that it is 'pawed about, dribbled on, and generally maltreated' nearly everyday - a high compliment for any book.
J.K. Rowling
Life is affected, even controlled by how thoughts are communicated in both words and actions.
Steven Redhead
I don't really know who I am , and I don't know when to stop, so if I see a great big threatening button that should never ever be touched I just want to do this!
Russel T. Davies
I want to be careful not to throw all this away. This is happiness. I think this is what happiness is. I haven't got it yet, but I can sense it out there. I feel I'm close to it. Some days, I'm so close I can almost smell it.
Sebastian Faulks
...for nothing is more boring than being forced to play.
Angela Carter
Capture the essence of your aspirations by understand the true meaning of your intuitive thoughts.
Steven Redhead
Lucas couldn’t have imagined that he would have ever felt so alone. No family, no friends. Even his own village had turned against him. He peered into the icy water; it looked like it was about to freeze over. Maybe I should drown myself before I freeze to death? he pondered. Was there no one to help? He instinctively bowed his head and prayed. A warm feeling engulfed his battered body. “I’m not alone, I will never be alone. God is with me,” he blubbered.
Mark A. Cooper
Revolutions are defined not only by the ideas that drive them but by the scale of their impact.
Ken Robinson
Ironically, [living in] communities of the like - minded is one of the greatest dangers of today ́s globalized world. And it ́s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling
Elif Shafak
I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of the gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.
Charlotte Brontë
She felt powerless to withstand or deny him. He was altogether too much for her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing a reviving wind, finds it to blow so strongly that it stops the breath.
Thomas Hardy
He's the man we were in search of, that's true, and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted.
Thomas Hardy
The truth is that the fever of desire in youth is fleeting disease that intimacy promptly cure.
Frank Harris
In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.
C.S. Lewis
Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
Spike Milligan
We are the children of the earth and removed from her our spirit withers.
George Macaulay Trevelyan
I thought about having a proper room,breathing life into it, and nobody minding.
Jenny Valentine
She was almost felled to the ground by the extraordinary sight which now met her eyes. There was the garden and some birds. The world was going on as usual. All the time she was writing the world had continued.
Virginia Woolf
The primary business I must attend to every day is to fellowship with the Lord. The first concern is not how much I might serve the Lord, but how my inner man might be nourished.
George Müller