Quotes by British Authors - Page 743

Two girls discover the secret of lifein a sudden line of poetry.
Denise Levertov
Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so, benevolent despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said into a despotism.
Taylor Caldwell
Stories have a unique power, David. The Inuit believe they can capture souls.
Chris d'Lacey
I love books. I’m giving some hard copies of the Sacerdos Mysteries book away because I think there’s something so brilliant about them. The digitisation trend is the future but people will still want the feel and smell of real books.
Elizabeth Amisu
Cos there's holes in this world,see. Holes. And the likes of Thommo, and Keith, and me, and Kenny, we just sort of fall through em. We weren't never bad kids, we just didn't have nothing to hold on to, that's all.
Ian Ayris
To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything. But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories.
Terry Pratchett
Apart from my absolute belief in National Socialism and my conviction of Hitler's superhuman heroism, I had always been attracted to Germany.
Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce)
I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when they're that strung out.
Ben Aaronovitch
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.
Benjamin Disraeli
I heard in my own voice the tulmult of a young man playig a role, uneasily, repackaging black R&B music from America, relying on gimmicky outfits, and pretending to be wild & free when in reality he needed to be looked after by his mother.
Pete Townshend
The 19th century had chosen only to remember the happy warrior. The 20th century only the blood come gargling. Both are essential to any understanding of Trafalgar.
Adam Nicolson
Public men in America are too public. Too accessible. This sitting on the stoop and being 'just folk' was all very well for local politics and the simple farmer days of a hundred years ago, but it's no good for world affairs. Opening flower-shows and being genial to babies and all that is out of date. These parish politics methods have to go. The ultimate leader ought to be distant, audible but far off. Show yourself and then vanish into a cloud. Marx would never have counted for one tenth of his weight as 'Charlie Marx' playing chess with the boys, and Woodrow Wilson threw away all his magic as far as Europe was concerned when he crossed the Atlantic. Before he crossed he was a god -- what a god he was! After he arrived he was just a grinning guest. I've got to be the Common Man, yes, but not common like that.
H.G.Wells
When your partner is regularly going out to bars and nightclubs and does not come home until after sunrise, it is likely that they are engaging in some form of infidelity.
Steven Magee
DEATH: "Mostly they aren't too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands. But they enter your realm each night without fear."MORPHEUS: "And I am far more terrible than you, sister.
Neil Gaiman
Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.
Philip Larkin
….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong!Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her.She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “*I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does."From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!
Laurie Matthew
On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.
Terry Pratchett
One of the strange laws of the contemplative life," Thomas Merton, one of its sovereign explorers, pointed out, "is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.
Pico Iyer
Robert explained how much simpler it was to pay money for things than to exchange them as the people were doing in the market. Later on the soldier gave the coins to his captain, who, later still, showed them to Pharaoh, who of course kept them and was much struck with the idea. That was really how coins first came to be used in Egypt. You will not believe this, I daresay, but really, if you believe the rest of the story, I don't see why you shouldn't believe this as well.
E Nesbit
I used to dream, and I used to vow;I wouldn't dream of it now.
Morrissey
He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.
J.M. Barrie
[O]ur percept is an elaborate computer model in the brain, constructed on the basis of information coming from [the environment], but transformed in the head into a form in which that information can be used. Wavelength differences in the light out there become coded as 'colour' differences in the computer model in the head. Shape and other attributes are encoded in the same kind of way, encoded into a form that is convenient to handle. The sensation of seeing is, for us, very different from the sensation of hearing, but this cannot be directly due to the physical differences between light and sound. Both light and sound are, after all, translated by the respective sense organs into the same kind of nerve impulses. It is impossible to tell, from the physical attributes of a nerve impulse, whether it is conveying information about light, about sound or about smell. The reason the sensation of seeing is so different from the sensation of hearing and the sensation of smelling is that the brain finds it convenient to use different kinds of internal model of the visual world, the world of sound and the world of smell. It is because we internally use our visual information and our sound information in different ways and for different purposes that the sensations of seeing and hearing are so different. It is not directly because of the physical differences between light and sound.
Richard Dawkins
Hit your hand on a stone and expect it to hurt.
Idries Shah
[Americans] have realized many things for which the rest of the world is still struggling...[yet] the civilization and the morals of the Americans fall far below their own principles.
Harriet Martineau
I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
John Keats
He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough; but precisely because of the extremity of danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he percieved, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situatuions. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.
George Orwell
This is the worst thing about waiting for someone. You have to look good all the time because they could turn up at any minute and see you before you've seen them
Mark Mason
... In view of the violence of political power responsibility must always prevail. The only possible synthesis between conviction and responsibility is thus one in which passion is subordinated to responsibility, so that political responsibility is the primary value to be pursued with passion, thereby engendering what H. H. Bruun terms a 'responsible ethic of conviction.' Weber states: 'To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a "cause" also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action.
Nicholas Gane
But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!
Robert Graves
Sometimes I think the one form of experience people are incapable of learning from is the political experience.
Doris Lessing
Daphne’s thought in Nation: This was no time to go totally mad. You had to maintain standards.
Terry Pratchett
[Americans] were, for one thing, so smitten with the idea of progress that they invented things without having any idea whether those things would be of any use.
Bill Bryson
As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a cell? Yet it's impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - perhaps even stronger. Life just wants to be.
Bill Bryson
After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister, and she wouldn't be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster.
Eva Ibbotson
In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. In the darkness the man with a candle is an easy target.
Michael Grant
As long as we as a society continue to belittle and dismiss women's accounts, disbelieve and question their stories, and blame them for their own assaults, we are playing right into the hands of those who silence victims by asking: "who would believe you anyways?".
Laura Bates
When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans.Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.
Jojo Moyes
Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!
Terry Pratchett
Man, don't ever be sorry you don't want to kill someone.
Michael Grant
A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.
Thomas Hardy
Remember it is as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.
William Thackeray
All punishment is mischief. All punishment in itself is evil.
Jeremy Bentham
Mmm," said Ares, without turning his head. "This war on terror isn't producing enough casualties. Bringing in Iran is the obvious choice, but I don't think they've got enough fire power yet. I wonder if I could somehow antagonize Japan."..."There's always Russia," said Ares, "but they've been harder to provoke since the end of the Cold War. Why are mortals so hung up on peace?" He shuffled through his papers. "Or maybe it's time to broaden out some of the African civil wars?
Marie Phillips
We come into this world crying and calling, wailing and singing; and for the first months of our life all our needs and instincts, our dissatisfactions and discoveries are immediately vocalized without apology and without censor.
Paul Newham
That’s enough naughty girl,” you say in a mocking tone, “I am going to put you over my knee and spank you for being such a bad wife tonight. It will hurt, but you’re going to enjoy it a lot more than you’ll admit…
Felicity Brandon
...talent is evenly distributed. You never know how many talented people are out there until you invite and inspire them to be creative.
John Wood
I have felt that odd whirr of wings in the head.
Virginia Woolf
The faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in the world." "They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You must remember the sort of life they lead. They get their notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their heads before they can show them on their faces.
Thomas Hughes
Orfanages r fule of little misstakes, just like my Englich.
Anthony T.Hincks
Why must you speak your thoughts? Silence, if fair words stick in your throat, would serve all our ends better.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him. Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.
A.A. Milne
The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience.
Tahir Shah
She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess.
Helen Oyeyemi
You don't need to look at the beauty to feel the love.
Anthony T.Hincks
In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness.
P.G. Wodehouse
...It's not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem 'Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA')
Philip Gross
It couldn’t last. Everyone was just killing time. But if all they did was kill time, time would end up killing them.
Michael Grant
Some things should never be said. Not out loud in clear, simple words. You talk around them. You leave gaps and blanks. You use other words and talk in curves and arcs for the worst things because you need to keep them like mist. Words are dangerous. Like a spell, if you name the mist, call out all of the words that describe it sharp and clear, you turn it solid, into something that no one should ever hold in their hands. Better that it stays like water, slipping between your fingers.
Alexia Casale
If we cannot all FEEL alike, we can all FEED alike on the Bread Life.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
On even the darkest of days, the brightest thing in my life is you.
Anthony T.Hincks