Quotes by British Authors - Page 740

HARRINGTON: And God hears your prayer, doesn't he? We hear Joy's getting better....LEWIS: That's not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me.
William Nicholson
A love of fashion makes the economy go round.
Liz Tilberis
Food to eat and games to play.Tell me why, tell me why.Serve it out and eat it up.Have a try, have a try.
Brian Jacques
Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realise how widespread envy was.
Alexander McCall Smith
I was once told that sometimes out of limitation comes our greatest strength.
Carol McKay
We'd taken up our positions on the benches between the school hall and a newly-installed outdoor basketball court. Being hip-hoppers, we were obliged to be obsessed with basketball. None of us had a ball.
Nikesh Shukla
To all to each a fair goodnight And pleasing dreams and slumbers light.
Walter Scott
Until you understand your customers - deeply and genuinely - you cannot truly serve them
Rasheed Ogunlaru
The sudden acquisition of power does not go to the head, but to the groin. In some, it promotes lust; in others, supplants it. Those on whom its effect is purely cerebral may indeed be counted as fortunate.
Amanda Craig
To go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. Pain that's unique to you. You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!
Peter Shaffer
I can’t bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel,” she continued. “Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse—to be tortured forever—I thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn’t it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out forever and ever?
Philip Pullman
Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?
Neil Gaiman
We forget because we must And not because we will.
Matthew Arnold
Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken.Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit.Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen.Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht »philosophische Sätze«, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen.Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen.4.112The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Innocence isn't something we lose, but realise we don't need.
Chloe Thurlow
Ironically, we may discover that death meditation is not a morbid exercise at all. Only when we lose the use of something taken for granted (whether the telephone or an eye) are we jolted into a recognition of its value. When the phone is fixed, the bandage removed from the eye, we briefly rejoice in their restoration but swiftly forget them again. In taking them for granted, we cease to be conscious of them. In taking life for granted, we likewise fail to notice it. (To the extent that we get bored and long for something exciting to happen.) By meditat- ing on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life.
Stephen Batchelor
When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.
Zadie Smith
Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!
Charles Dickens
The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.
Douglas Adams
When we have the courage to claim space for ourselves. When we risk creativity. When we relish our sensuality. When we honor our lives and their experiences as valuable. When we create from a female body, expressing ourselves in a woman’s voice, using a woman’s language. We begin to bloom.
Lucy H. Pearce
Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
Frederick W. Robertson
Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.
Tahir Shah
Yes, and words are not deeds, Solanka allowed, moving off fretfully. Though words can become deeds. If said in the right place and at the right time, they can move mountains and change the world. Also, uh-huh, not knowing what you're doing - separating deeds from the words that define them - was apparently becoming an acceptable excuse. To say "I didn't mean it" was to erase meaning from your misdeeds, at least in the opinion of the Beloved ALis of the world. Could that be so? Obviously, no. No, it simply could not. Many people would say that even a genuine act of repentance could not atone for a crime, much less this unexplained blankness - an infinitely lesser excuse, a mere assertion of ignorance that wouldn't even register on any scale of regret.
Salman Rushdie
We are children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.
Peter Atkins
Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.
Terry Pratchett
All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book.
David Livingstone
All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.
Philip Pullman
Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.
Elizabeth Gaskell
I was on the sidewalk, buffering, wondering if it was okay to follow people in real life.
Olivia Sudjic
You have to accept all sides of yourself – there’s no point fighting them – just learn how to handle them, and return to the positive, balanced being you know you can be, once the winds have blown through.
Jay Woodman
The task of modern man is not to find his inner self, but to create himself.
Rod Judkins
Sending love to a situation is really simple and works wonders. All you have to do is think of the situation and imagine it surrounded by a light that reminds you of love.
Kyle Gray
There in the sweet sacking smell of the mail bags he understood that he was dying, and it pleased him that he was going in the company of so many soft words home.
Chris Cleave
Our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!
Charles Dickens
Weight gains aren't failures – they're learning curves.
Rachel Stevenson
What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.
John Howe
The quiet but inexorable breaking down of self-esteem is much more sinister - it’s violation of the soul.
Rachel Abbott
As she turned left to the gateway, it occurred to her that swimming was only one of a very large number of things she had no idea what to do. Peter had been right to object to her ignorance. "It's not that I'm lazy," she explained to Waif as they arrived in what seemed to be stables, "or stupid. I've just not bothered to look round the edges of Mother's way of doing things, you see.
Diana Wynne Jones
...space flight still had a long way to go to catch up with the safety record of the milkshake industry.
Kevin Fong
If you don't see your own value, don't expect others to as well.
Robert Tew
Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?
Buchi Emecheta
You should open these doors with care and caution-but, first, you must know how to close them. And above all, you must know which doors should be left unopened...
Michael Bentine
Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure.
Julian Barnes
Dragons were a problem sometimes, but they only came on Tuesdays, so you could work around them.
Mike Carey
In the world of Big Macks Starbucks coffee and oversized SUVS it was business as usual snort and go
Saira Viola
A race that rejected the idea of personal sacrifice would surely be erased from time's records before long.
Salman Rushdie
Leofgifu was skeptical, but then she always was with men. None of them could be trusted; they covered you in kisses and promises, then vanished, leaving nothing but a torn heart, and ofttimes a swelling belly.
Helen Hollick
Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.
Cory Doctorow
Dear Me, I made a jackass out of myself tonight. I couldn’t stop it. The second I saw Stacy, I sprouted big donkey ears and a tail. I don’t know why she gets under my skin. Why should I care what she thinks of me? She’ll be gone right along with Jason when Alana gets bored. Alana’s lasagna was terrible. No one noticed that I was slipping the harder pieces of it into my salad bowl and hiding them under the lettuce. It’s a good thing they don’t have a dog because if it was to eat the scraps, it would surely die. Jason and Stacy are gonna be shitting pasta shards. I feel sorry for Jason, not so much for Stacy. I’ll have to patch things up with Alana, so this may not be the right time to tell her that her cooking is lethal. She was pissed when I left her house. I’m sure she’ll tell Mom and Grammy I was a jerk. Jason was probably mad at me too. I feel a little bad about that. Me
Robin Alexander
World & people only seem unlovable due to toxins & lies they've been fed. Release distortions of mind. Return all to innocence & freedom
Jay Woodman
If anyone does not have three minutes in his life to make an omelette, then life is not worth living.
Raymond Blanc
Stars, I have seen them fall,But when they drop and dieNo star is lost at allFrom all the star-sown sky.The toil of all that beHelps not the primal fault;It rains into the seaAnd still the sea is salt.
A.E. Housman
Elle Remembered Yorkshire road and the flat he shared with Caitlin and their daughter, and she almost stopped and turned back, and then she hardened herself against it. It's his problem if he wants to sleep with someone and he shouldn't, she told herself. It's a one night thing. I'm in the clear. It's sex, nothing else.
Harriet Evans
Quick, someone's coming! Look real!
Terry Pratchett
One should continue (of course with dignity) to develop, however old one may be. She had nothing against developing, against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive one was not dead -obviously, decided Mrs. Fisher, and development, change, ripening, were life.
Elizabeth von Arnim
I’m pretty sure I’m the only author who intends to take the longest possible route to a destination that will always be over the next hill.
Fennel Hudson
Reason, in the end, will win against unreason.
Nick Clegg
This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
Wilfred Owen
You can come round to my flat." Toreth's voice changed, sliding subtly into something hard-edged but seductive. "I don't need chains to make you do what I want. I don't need anything. I can take whatever I want from you, however I want it, and you can't stop me.
Manna Francis
The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this.
Thomas Hardy