Quotes by British Authors - Page 750

If a book did nothing else for you, other than to save you from the company of other people; if all it did was to deliver you from their gossip, and their dull affairs, and their appalling manners, and their rotten Arabic, and their stupid ideas, and their woefully misguided opinions, and above all, from the need to be polite to them; if a book did nothing more than that, it would still be the best friend you ever had.
Andrew Killeen
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen
There are few nicer things than sitting up in bed, drinking strong tea, and reading.
Alan Clark
His closeness makes my heart beat faster, my skin tingle, my body want things it doesn't even know.
Teri Terry
We are currently in the midst of the greatest epidemic sickness known to humanity.
Paul Levy
It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.
Charles Dickens
Life stand still here.
Virginia Woolf
The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.
J.R.R. Tolkien
[On setting all clocks at varying times in advance...]A selfless gesture on my part which ensures I am never late, but really only means that I spend time waiting not only for people who are late but also for people who are on time.
Jon Richardson
I did not want to tell her what happened, but I had to now. I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.
Chris Cleave
The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
G.K. Chesterton
Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture.
Simon Pegg
They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.
Idries Shah
Since much of American taxes prior to 1763 went to support the local clergy, one humorist suggested the opportunity to vote on that. If the minister was turned out, he could open a tavern and preach to his customers if he served them liquor.
Colin G. Calloway
Spreading rumours is our national past time
Monica Ali
The past always wishes to play its part in the unfolding drama of life.
Steven Redhead
These days, in the world of apps and social media and … idiot friends, it is literally impossible to avoid spoilers. If a character dies, it is gonna be the number one trending topic on Twitter, it is gonna be the top trending story on Facebook — and Reddit and Tumblr just turn into a completely uncensored memorial service of memes.This happens all the time with sports results, but — I shit you not — I once got a notification from the BBC News app saying that a character in a show I was watching had just died! I thought that news notifications are supposed to be for impending natural disasters, not for just ruining my bloody afternoon.
Dan Howell
Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper throughs than anyone else.
C.S. Lewis
The trouble with me is, Treece thought, that I'm a liberal humanist who believes in original sin. I think of man as a noble creature who has only to extend himself to the full range of his powers to be civilized and good; yet his performance by and large has been intrinsically evil and could be more so as the extension continues.
Malcolm Bradbury
Her upbringing had given her an independence of mind that made her more like a girl of today than one of her own time - which was why she had walked out, and why she was not daunted by the prospect of being alone.
Philip Pullman
When you can't get what you want, get what you need
Benny Bellamacina
May He give usall the courage that we needto go the way He shepherds us.That when He callswe may go unfrightened. If He bids us come to Himacross the waters,that unfrightened we may go. And if He bids us climb a hill,may we not notice that it is a hill,mindful only ofthe happiness of His company. He made us for Himself,that we should travel with Himand see Him at the lastin His unveiled beautyin the abiding city whereHe is lightand happinessand endless home.
Bede Jarrett
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
Benjamin Disraeli
Buddha gives me the strength to bring my words to life and he gives me the strength to share my love of life.
Anthony T.Hincks
Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.
Walter Scott
Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.
Jane Austen
You might belong in Hufflepuff, Where they are just and loyal, Those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafriad of toil
J.K. Rowling
[A] resistance that dispenses with consolations is always stronger than one which relies on them.
Perry Anderson
Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be...
William Wordsworth
Either blasphemy is a victimless crime or its victim is powerful enough to take care of himself without any help from you.
Richard Dawkins
But an ordinary day can mark the beginning of an extraordinary journey!
Elizabeth George
Their [cats] effortless passing between the wild and domestic worlds suggests the kind of grace we need as a species to move between nature and culture.
Richard Mabey
No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.
David Nicholls
As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?
Rowan Atkinson
Paul gives us an astonishing understanding of waiting in the New Testament book of Romans, as rendered by Eugene Peterson, 'Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.' With such motivation, we can wait as we sense God is indeed with us, and at work within us, as he was with Mary as the child within her grew.
Luci Shaw
People change. Sometimes I think they don't know they're changing until it's already happened, though. You get so used to being one person, it's weird when you wake up and everything is different.
Lindsey Kelk
People who say "no" right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying "no" but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add "sorry" or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say, "Sorry, no, why, what happened?
Lee Child
That's all YOU know,' said Digory. 'It's because you're a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.
C.S. Lewis
Too many people are missing their destiny a year at a time because they're too scared to think in decades!" (p. 127)
Pete Greig
Is there wisdom in innocence? I think there is, but there is a cult now of drab men and women, for whom the world, and even life itself, is a kind of commodity. These critics, having eaten, now study their excrement to see what they consumed. On this they base certain conclusions. Their ignorance is uncompromising. Let us rather stand before the unknown, in very humble, quiet observance and wait while it reveals itself.
Phillip Mann
Aslan" said Lucy "you're bigger"."That is because you are older, little one" answered he."Not because you are?""I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger".
C.S. Lewis
Sex is a metaphor for everything else and everything is a metaphor for sex as well. Because sex is a coming together of two weather patterns, two separate countries, two entities in a conscious state of potentially blissful crisis. Or chaos, or harmony. You’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, but it is the most catastrophic, exciting, and weakening thing that can happen to us. If we are personally involved in it, every fiber of our being is made self-conscious, or is encourages to unify on some level with others. We are delicate. We bring our damage to sexuality, we bring our hopes, we bring our self-image, we bring our world-image, we bring what we believe we are/what we believe we aren’t, our blind spots, our prejudices, our sadness. Everything comes out. A lot of people are left wanting, and confusing, and having the idea that their body is like an unloved apartment building; it’s up for grabs and it’s of absolutely no worth. If we feel that way about ourselves and if we feel that way about others, then of course, sex is nothing more than a lot of rubbing and some kind of release. But the more we are, the more we can feel, the more we can empathize, the more human we are.
Melinda Gebbie
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody it saves so much trouble
Rudyard Kipling
In some warped way, having an embalmed body with us made perfect sense.
Tahir Shah
We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
Stephen Fry
The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.
G.K. Chesterton
Until the coming of another day of fear, they walked in silence with bowed heads.
J.R.R. Tolkien
As with all new inventions, there are upsides and downsides. The commercial drone is no exception. But until robust safeguards have been introduced to protect personal privacy from prying eyes in the skies, the true benefits to society of unmanned aerial vehicles will remain unrealised.
Alex Morritt
In my work with hundreds of women over the past few years a theme has emerged: women’s desperate, unquenchable desire to step into their power, countered by the fear of what will happen if they do. The longing to express the riches inside them, wrestling with the deep terror of being burned by the judgement, hatred or rejection of strangers or loved ones if they do. This fear of being burned is an oddly female one. It is a fear which keeps us small and scared… but seemingly safe. From the outside this can seem like an overreaction. Both the need, and the fear. But women, it seems, have an innate knowing of what it means to burn… and be burned. They know the dangers in their bones. And it makes them wary.
Lucy H. Pearce
I loved you instantly, because angels can love instantly.
Dianna Hardy
sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.
Jon Ronson
He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea, which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.
George Eliot
...Catholic versus Protestant, essentially. It's that kind of fight. ... And it goes on to this day. Will we never learn? Who knows? Religion. Shit it.
Stephen Fry
I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
Mary Wollstonecraft
We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth
Ian McEwan
But at the same time, there must never be the least hesitation in giving up a position the moment it is shown to be untenable. It is not going too far to say that the greatness of a scientific investigator does not rest on the fact of his having never made a mistake, but rather on his readiness to admit that he has done so, whenever the contrary evidence is cogent enough.
William Bayliss
Then, things get hard, because once you know magic exists, you have to decide whether to be the bystander, or the magician … and we were all born to be magicians.
Dianna Hardy
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made ...
Robert Browning
I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned.
Philippa Gregory
As we encounter each other, we see our diversity — of background, race, ethnicity, belief – and how we handle that diversity will have much to say about whether we will in the end be able to rise successfully to the great challenges we face today.
Dan Smith