Quotes by British Authors - Page 738

I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Rather than looking for explanations for why all people deserve to be treated with compassion and respect, we ought to be working at creating a world in which people are treated with compassion and respect. Human rights aren’t lying around waiting to be discovered. They’re made, not found.
David Livingstone Smith
The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem
Captain Jack Sparrow
You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?
C.S. Lewis
In order to deceive others, it is necessary also to deceive oneself. The actor playing Hamlet must indeed believe that he is the Prince of Denmark, though when he leaves the stage he will usually remember who he really is. On the other hand, when someone's entire life is based on pretense, they will seldom if ever return to reality. That is the secret of successful politicians, evangelists and confidence tricksters—they believe that they are telling the truth, even when they know that they have faked the evidence. Sincerity, my dear Julia, is a quality not to be trusted.
Sarah Caudwell
... each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which survive us, and which are then thrown back into the common stock from which they are soon gathered again and ascribed other roles in other circumstances.
Andrew Motion
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
Charles Kingsley
None so deaf as those that will not hear.
Matthew Henry
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.
George Orwell
Whenever we have something that we are good at--something we care about--that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions.
Malcolm Gladwell
I suppose what I mean is, I never felt like I was part of a gang. No, that's the wrong word. Part of a MOVEMENT! That's it. It feels like there's a swirling, shining wind of change sweeping right at you, sweeping over everyone, and you're inside it. It feels like there is something that transcends you, that goes beyond whatever you are, that is great and whole and good. Great, because when it all comes together it's so much more than all its individual pieces. Whole because you're part of it and if you weren't, then both you and it would be diminished. Good because at its core is pure talent and skill, like you know you'll never have yourself.
Simon Cheshire
The Thames Shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it.
J.G. Ballard
There is nothing at all to be done about it, There is nothing to do about anything.
T.S Eliot
I know it's possible to overcome even very big problems in life, to heal yourself and move on
Jodi Ann Bickley
There are few things more mysterious than endings. I mean, for example, when did the Greek gods end, exactly? Was there a day when Zeus waved magisterially down from Olympus and Aphrodite and her lover Ares, and her crippled husband Hephaestus ) I always felt sorry for him), and all the rest got rolled up like a worn-out carpet?
Salley Vickers
I don't know what it is about "magic happens"-stickers on cars but every time I see one I wanna get out my permanent marker and sneak over and write underneath it "so does cot death".
Tim Minchin
It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave.’ ‘Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.
Neil Gaiman
...above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause for it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Bertrand Russell
Let the brickwork of ignorance be thrown down, and let not spiritual sunshine be shut out from the self-deceived heart. Pride, Self-love, cowardly Mistrust of God’s wisdom and goodness, are natural to our fallen nature; but the entrance of His Word into the heart is as that of the glorious beams of the day,—joy, brightness, and holiness follow the admission into its deepest recesses of the pure, life-giving light of Heaven!
A.L.O.E.
Dad?" Jesus asked."Yes son?" God replied."Why does man have so many religions?" Jesus asked."It's because they all have different beliefs," God said."Why?" Jesus asked."It's because they have a free mind. It's up to them to choose what they wish to believe in," God said."But, what if they forget about you?" Jesus asked his dad.God replied, "Even though they may forget about me, they will always remember me. Would you ever forget me?" God asked."Never!" said Jesus, "How could I ever forget my father?""Exactly! And so it is for them," God added.
Anthony T.Hincks
He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain air stung his lips. She was driving too fast on this road that had once been a forest. Early humans had lived in it. They studied fire and the movement of the sun. They read the clouds and the moon and tried to understand the human mind His father had tried to melt him into a Polish forest when he was five years old. He knew he must leave no trace or trail of his existence because he must never find his way home. That was what his father had told him. You cannot come home. This was not something possible to know but he had to know it all the same
Deborah Levy
He fought his inner wuss and groaned, “Fine. Bait me up and show me the hook.
Samantha Young
Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
C.S. Lewis
Human feelings are queer things -- I am much happier -- black-leading the stove's -- making the beds and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else.
Charlotte Brontë
And in Kandahar he was taught about survival, about fighting and killing and hunting, and he learned much else without being taught, such as looking out for himself and watching his tongue and not saying the wrong thing, the thing that might get him killed. About the dignity of the lost, about losing, and how it cleansed the soul to accept defeat, and about letting go, avoiding the trap of holding on too tightly to what you wanted, and about abandonment in general, and in particular fatherlesness, the lessness of fathers, the lessness of the fatherless, and the best defenses of those who are less against those who are more: inwardness, forethought, cunning, humility and good peripheral vision. The many lessons of lessness. The lessening from which growing could begin.
Salman Rushdie
Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, destroys even more: the belief that any patterns exist. But we cannot, I think, survive without such belief. So each of us must pretend to find, or re-erect, a pattern.
Julian Barnes
And now dear little children, who may this story read, To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed: Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye, And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.
Mary Howitt
I chatter chatter as I flow To join the brimming river For men may come and men may go But I go on forever.
Lord Alfred Tennyson
Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
You can never be wise unless you love reading.
Samuel Johnson
Every answer you ever need lies within your own silence..
Ian Tucker
They say some couples are joined in heaven, and on Earth they look for their partner soul to be with.I knew I had found mine in her. And who can fight heaven?
Ruth Ahmed
If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies--mother, I can't speak of what I shall feel if she dies." His voice was choked in his throat.
Elizabeth Gaskell
I wish to be washed clean of my old life. To let go of my tide of sorrows and find my way to a new shore.
William Joyce
When a man is overcome by anger, he has a poisoned fever. He loses his strength, he loses his power over himself and over others. He throws away time in which he might have gained the end he desires. The is no time for anger in the world. - The Ancient One
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.
Jane Austen
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.
Neil Gaiman
Oh how warm it makes one to know that there is one person in the world to whom one is everything. A lover is the most precious, the most marvelous possession.
Elizabeth von Arnim
Mental illnesses grab you by the leg, screaming, and chow you down whole.They make you selfish. They make you irrational. They make you irrational. They make you self-absorbed. They make you needy. They make you cancel plans last minute. They make you not very fun to spend time with. They make you exhausting to be near.
Holly Bourne
That sin will never stand firm which is heartily prayed against....We must spread out all our case before our heavenly Physician, if He is to give us daily relief.
J.C. Ryle
That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb.
Arthur C. Clarke
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.
Robert W. Service
The only sure rule is to remember that the Bible is indeed God's gift to the church, to equip that church for its work in the world, and that serious study of it can and should become one of the places where, and the means by which, heaven and earth interlock and God's future purposes arrive in the present.
N.T. Wright
...and as she was crossing to the day-nursery he added thoughtlessly, 'And shut that window. I feel a draught.' 'O George, never ask me to do that. The window must always be left open for them, always, always.
J.M. Barrie
Passion is the journey inward.. Purpose is the journey overcoming the fear.. Know Freedom and Leave Your Legend.
Jonathan Bailey
She had one of those husky voices that sounded as if she were permanently coming down with a cold. Men seemed to find that sexy in a woman, which Jackson thought was odd because it made women sound less like women and more like men. Maybe it was a gay thing.
Kate Atkinson
mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire.
George Eliot
When she came back down, Sam and Astrid had arrived.Sam hugged Dekka, and the two of them stayed that way for a long time, saying nothing. Both had loved Brianna.To Edilio, Sam said, “I’m so sorry, man. I wish I’d . . . You know what I wish.”Edilio fought back a fresh rush of tears, nodded, waited until he was sure he could speak, and said, “I’m glad you’re back, boss.
Michael Grant
I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare into the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?
Patrick Ness
Your attitude of serving the Lord can transform even the most menial of tasks into a magnificent sacrifice of love.
Elizabeth George
Have you ever been lonely? No, neither have I. Solitary, yes. Alone, certainly. But lonely means minding about being on your own. I've never minded about it.
Sebastian Faulks
If people don't appreciate your REAL self it's hard to be with them, but you only find TRUE friends by SHOWING that self & TRUSTING.
Jay Woodman
There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis.
Os Guinness
Should I after tea and cakes and ices have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
T.S Eliot
Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.
Jane Austen
The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
Zadie Smith
You can never be really sure of how much you believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death to you.
C.S. Lewis
During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.
Charles Dickens
How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.
Virginia Woolf