Quotes by British Authors - Page 756

To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist, existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian, existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man "damned": but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that? - that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking.
G.K. Chesterton
Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.
J.K. Rowling
We need heroes, however outlandish, because although we might not be slaying real dragons, we all have our quests.
Russ Thorne
That drew a laugh from Jessamy, but he said, after a moment: “You had better flay me. It was my fault—all my fault!”“I was wondering how long it would be before you contrived to convince yourself that you were to blame,” said Alverstoke caustically. “I haven’t the slightest wish to know how you arrived at such an addlebrained conclusion, so don’t put yourself to the trouble of telling me!
Georgette Heyer
These summer nights are short. Going to bed before midnight is unthinkable and talk, wine, moonlight and the warm air are often in league to defer it one, two or three hours more. It seems only a moment after falling asleep out of doors that dawn touches one gently on the shoulder, and, completely refreshed, up one gets, or creeps into the shade or indoors for another luxurious couple of hours. The afternoon is the time for real sleep: into the abyss one goes to emerge when the colours begin to revive and the world to breathe again about five o'clock, ready once more for the rigours and pleasures of late afternoon, the evening, and the night.
Patrick Leigh Fermor
I longed to teach, but I had to wait until the desire had left me before I could really do so.
Idries Shah
There is nothing more wonderful than a book. It may be a message to us from the dead, from human souls we never saw who lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet these little sheets of paper speak to us, arouse us, teach us, open our hearts and in turn open their hearts to us like brothers. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, philosophy lame.
Charles Kingsley
Dumbledore raised his finger for silence, a silence which fell as though he had struck Uncle Vernon dumb.
J.K. Rowling
Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.
Idries Shah
Perhaps the most difficult thing about loving and helping an addict, which most people who haven't been through it don't understand, is this: every day the cycle continues is your new worst day. When looked at from the outside it seems endless, the same thing over and over again; but when you're living it, it's like being a hamster on a wheel. Every day there's the chronic anxiety of waiting for news, the horrible rush when it turns out to be bad, the overwhelming sense of déjà vu - and the knowledge that, despite your best efforts, you'll probably be here again. Even so-called good days are not without their drawbacks. You enjoy them as much as you can, but in the back of your mind there's the lurking fear that tomorrow you could be back to square one again, or worse.
Mitch Winehouse
Sometimes the clouds weren’t weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn’t mean it wasn’t scary, or that I wasn’t still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I’d be alright.
Samantha Young
To understand how growth, aging and death works, you must understand the radiation environment.
Steven Magee
If you want to run for Prime Minister, you can. If you don’t, that’s wonderful, too. Shave your armpits, don’t shave them, wear flats one day, heels the next. These things are so irrelevant and surface to what it is all really about, and I wish people wouldn’t get caught up in that. We want to empower women to do exactly what they want, to be true to themselves, to have the opportunities to develop.
Emma Watson
I don't have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I'm out in nature. It's just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me.
Jane Goodall
Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.
Charles Kingsley
And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
C.S. Lewis
A town without a book shop was a town without a heart
Veronica Henry
Well?" said Loki. "What about you, Heimdall? Do you have any suggestions?""I do," said Heimdall. "But you won't like it."Thor banged his fist down upon the table. "It does not matter whether or not we like it," he said. "We are gods! There is nothing that any of us gathered here would not do to get back Mjollnir, the hammer of the gods. Tell us your idea, and if it is a good idea, we will like it.""You won't like it," said Heimdall."We will like it!" said Thor."Well," said Heimdall, "I think we should dress Thor as a bride. Have him put on the necklace of the Brisings. Have him wear a bridal crown. Stuff his dress so he looks like a woman. Veil his face. We'll have him wear keys that jingle, as women do, drape him with jewels -""I don't like it!" said Thor. "People will think... well, for a start they'll think I dress up in women's clothes. Absolutely out of the question. I don't like it. I am definitely not going to be wearing a bridal veil. None of us like this idea, do we? Terrible, terrible idea. I've got a beard. I can't shave off my beard.""Shut up, Thor," said Loki son of Laufey. "It's an excellent idea.
Neil Gaiman
Lewis wanted us to understand that the inner world is shaped by stories.
Alister E. McGrath
Oh fair enough are sky and plain,But I know fairer far:Those are as beautiful againThat in the water are;The pools and rivers wash so cleanThe trees and clouds and air,The like on earth was never seen,And oh that I were there.These are the thoughts I often thinkAs I stand gazing downIn act upon the cressy brinkTo strip and dive and drown;But in the golden-sanded brooksAnd azure meres I spyA silly lad that longs and looks And wishes he were I.
A.E. Housman
There is a tide in the affairs of women Which taken at the flood leads - God knows where.
Lord Byron
He was already fading. I knew that it wouldn't be long until he was just a vague image, however much I tried to cling onto his memory.
Caroline Green
People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.
Bob Hope
I wanted to grab his stupid ears and smash his stupid head against the door until his stupid brains leaked out. Instead, I did nothing.
Cat Clarke
We do not go (to the theatre) like our ancestors to escape from the pressure of reality so much as to confirm our experience of it.
Charles Lamb
You mustn't let your emotions get the better of you. There is a great deal to be angry about, but anger doesn't change things.
Gemma Malley
BOLLOXIMIAN:My pleasures for new cunts I will uphold,And have reserves of kindness for the old.I grant in absence dildo may be usedWith milk of goats, when once our seed’s infused.My prick no more to bald cunt shall resort—Merkins rub off, and often spoil the sport.POCKENELLO:Let merkin, sir, be banished from the court.PENE:'Tis like a dead hedge when the land is poor.
John Wilmot
Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking.""An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.
Agatha Christie
If I was ever glad to have gone, I was never glad to go.
Lionel Shriver
When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.
Christopher Hitchens
And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.
Neil Gaiman
She just wanted - had always wanted - a good book to read. Being chased by hellhounds and blowing things up were comparatively unimportant parts of the job. Getting the books - now, that was what *really* mattered to her.
Genevieve Cogman
For the entrance is low: we must stoop till we are no taller than children to get in.
C.S. Lewis
I love him more than any man on earth. He’s everything. One look across a library instantly and irrevocably changed both of our lives forever and now we can’t get out – trapped together – because this love is unsurpassable and we both know it.
Sarah Michelle Lynch
The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril
Niall Ferguson
What is evil?' asked the Fiend
Joseph Delaney
..in the 21st century, wedon’t need to march against size zero models, risible pornography,lap-dancing clubs and Botox. We don’t need to riot, or go on hungerstrike. There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even adonkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute,and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh. Peoplefancy us when they observe us giving out relaxed, earthy chuckles.
Caitlin Moran
Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it. To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.
Salman Rushdie
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.
Aldous Huxley
My poetic aspirationIs to become,A Jack of all stylesAnd a master of pun.
Clive Blake
That is our Shield Ring, our last stronghold; not the barrier fells and the totter-moss between, but something in the hearts of men.
Rosemary Sutcliff
It was a common saying among the Christians in the primitive Church, "The soul and the body make a man; the spirit and discipline make a Christian;" implying, that none could be real Christians, without the help of Christian discipline. But if this be so, is it any wonder that we find so few Christians; for where is Christian discipline
John Wesley
It's all you can say, when the end comes: 'I did not waste my time.' I think that matters. I think it may be all that matters.
Conn Iggulden
When you make a man ashamed, you make him dangerous.
Chris Cleave
People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!
Samuel Johnson
the normal laws of development are inverted here in the Congo. The forest, not the town, offers the safest sanctuary and it is grandfathers who have been more exposed to modernity than their grandchildren. I can think of nowhere else on the planet where the same can be true.” p141
Tim Butcher
You don't look so much like a great hero,' Jarrah said. 'I'm pretty sure I'm not,' Mack said wearily. 'My throat is hoarse from screaming in terror. I don't think heroes have that problem.
Michael Grant
Ladies, we are at a massive disadvantage in the workplace. Your male peers are flirting with their male bosses constantly. The average workplace is like f*cking Bromancing the Stone. That’s basically what male bonding is. Flirting. They’re flirting with each other playing golf, they’re flirting with each other going to the football, they’re flirting with each other chatting at the urinals – and, sadly, flirting with each other in after-hours visits to strip clubs and pubs. They are bonding with each other over their biological similarities. If the only way you can bond with them is over your biological differences, you go for it. Feel pressurised to actually f*ck them if you do? Then don’t flirt. Find it an easy way to just crack on? Then crack on – and don’t blame other women for doing it.
Caitlin Moran
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
John Lennon
All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.
John Lubbock
If I could have all of those things, I wouldn't mind if I touched her or not.
Nick Hornby
Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose
T.S Eliot
To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ Who is our life.
W. Ian Thomas
The cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs. They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies.
Laurence Durrell
Beware what you wish for, unless you have the grace to hope that your luck can be shared.
Christopher Hitchens
I’m more than twisted. I’m the worst kind of vampire… But you’re the one who’s craving me, so what does that make you?
Lindsay J. Pryor
'Time to live dangerously. We're having pancakes.'
Barbara Elsborg
Yet if there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions—so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?
Stephen Hawking
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
George Orwell
We prayed these wars would end all wars --In war we know is no romance.")
Mark Knopfler