Quotes by British Authors - Page 77

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Alan W. Watts
I can't imagine going on when there are no more expectations.
Edith Evans
Prayer requires more of the heart than of the tongue.
Adam Clarke
A strange smile was playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and shuddered. While that smile was on his face no one dared address him; all they could do was to stand ready to obey.
J.M. Barrie
God begins molding a mother after His own heart on the inside--in the inner woman and her heart--and then works outward.
Elizabeth George
The widespread success of science is too significantan issue to be treated as if it were a happy accident that we arefree to enjoy without enquiring more deeply into why this isthe case. Critical realist achievements of this kind cannot be amatter of logical generality, something that one would expectto be attainable in all possible worlds. Rather, they are an ex-perientially confirmed aspect of the particularity of the worldin which we live and of the kind of beings that we are. Achiev-ing scientific success is a specific ability possessed by human-kind, exercised in the kind of universe that we inhabit. I believethat a full understanding of this remarkable human capacityfor scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that ourpower in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who,in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in theimage of God (Genesis 1:26–27).
John Polkinghorne
What are we doing here? Has something gone wrong?”“Oh no, Ron,” came Fred’s voice, very sarcastically. “No, this is exactly where we wanted to end up.
J.K. Rowling
Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.
Margaret Drabble
I once knew a fellow who committed robbery with violence, and he was sentenced to a long prison stretch and 12 strokes of the cat. He'd been injured during the robbery, so they put him in hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. During the administration of the cat, he fainted after six strokes, and the doctor put him in hospital again. And he got very friendly with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they got him well enough to go back and take the next six strokes. I saw him afterward and I said: "Oh, Jesus—that bloody law, that bloody judge!" But he said: "I don't want the fellow who made the law, and I don't want the fellow who passed the sentence. All I want is the fellow who held the bloody whip.
Peter O'Toole
Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things
Alexander Hamilton
The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs.
Rose Macaulay
grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.
J.R.R. Tolkien
And it was suddenly very simple: There was no choice.
Jojo Moyes
For I have known them all already, known them all—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
T.S Eliot
I have always derived great comfort from William Shakespeare. After a depressing visit to the mirror or an unkind word from a girlfriend or an incredulous stare in the street, I say to myself: 'Well. Shakespeare looked like shit.' It works wonders.
Martin Amis
It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child, have to be more mature than all the adults around....But the problem is that they want me to become everything they themselves couldn't accomplish in life.....As a result, I had to work my butt off to fulfill all their dreams at the same time.
Elif Shafak
Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.
Neil Gaiman
People always say that in England we lead shallow lives. Our lives must be shallow because we live in a country where nobody believes in anything any more. My whole life, I've been told: 'Western civilization? An old bitch gone in the teeth,' And so people say, go to Israel. Because in Israel at least people are fighting. In Israel, they're fighting for something they believe in.
David Hare
This place does not feel like my country. It feels like countries I have read about where things are very bad. It feels, in fact, like exactly the kind of thing we were protesting against, but we thought it was elsewhere. It is not heartening to find that it has come to us.
Nick Harkaway
But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will.
J.R.R. Tolkien
There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend – a primal energy that carries me forward when nothing else will – but more often than not I am face-to-face with a stranger, a companion to something I recognise as myself, sure enough, but one who knows more than I do, thinks less of danger and propriety than I ever have or will, feels a cool and amused contempt for the rules and rituals by which I live, the duties I too readily accept, the compromises I too willingly allow (p. 262)
John Burnside
Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty.
John Stuart Mill
Lo!" said Percivale, "those I had slain were not put to silence. I heard their breath speak out of the lips of others; I saw their looks mock out of the eyes of others; the life that was gone from their bodies was but draughted to enliven fresh matter. In every ray of light, in every gust that blew, the life of the dead moved to confound me. Ah, Saint, the things they had uttered were black and heavy; I could not bear them.
Clemence Housman
Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.
Horace Smith
Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything.
Neil Gaiman
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
Idries Shah
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Winston S. Churchill
Then the whole range, much nearer now, paled into fresh splendor; a full moon rose, touching each peak in succession like some celestial lamplighter, until the long horizon glittered against a blue-black sky.
James Hilton
Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look around them.
Ouida
At only ten a.m., Edgar found himself already eyeing the Doritos on the counter. One thing he hadn't anticipated about the 'home office' was Snack Syndrome; lately his mental energies divided evenly between his new calling (worrying about money, which substituted neatly for earning it) and not stuffing his face.
Lionel Shriver
There is more food in a pennyworth of bread than in a gallon of ale.
Joseph Livesey
literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives -- husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends. What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute.
Arthur Henry King
When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God.”-Review of Ida Craddock’s “Heavenly Bridegrooms
Aleister Crowley
It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.
Terry Pratchett
If you're too specific, people will purposely mishear you so they can be outraged about whatever thing that usually outrages them.
Patrick Ness
In every pang that rends the heart The Man of Sorrows had a part.
Michael Bruce
After that I went home and Sally put what was left of me to bed; next day, being a Christian family, we saluted the happy morn with the Hell and Hades of a row because I wouldn't get up and go to early service, my sister being quite determined that even if I didn't get up. I shouldn't sleep.
Dion Fortune
Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.
Tanith Lee
It is this perfect accuracy, this lack of play, of variety, that makes the machine-made article so lifeless. Wherever there is life there is variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the earlier period.
Harold Speed
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.
W.H. Auden
He was red with anger, except where he was white with rage. When he spoke, his words seared through the air like so many knives, clipped as topiary, crisp as biscuits.
Terry Pratchett
They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.
Virginia Woolf
To me, I see scars of courage. Inflicting them gave him the strength to survive the pain that's plagued him all his life. I'm grateful to every one of them because he's still here, with me.
Nicola Haken
There's a difference between disclosing that which is only your business and hiding away from the world and not seeing, shining and sharing your magic.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did know I had consumed a large amount of alcohol. But I must have done something crazier than just being found drunk to have a nurse sitting by my bed. I thought it would be a good idea to say something and planned it for several seconds. 'She's all right,' I said. 'Who is?' asked the nurse. 'Alice. I'm all right now.' As I spoke I wondered if I had said something wrong. didn't sound like me. There were so many voices muttering in the background it was hard to tell.
Alice Jamieson
A tiding of magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told
Paula Hawkins
Juliet shook her head. The thought of eating anything made her feel nauseous. "No thanks, I'm not hungry.""Oh yeah, the heartbreak diet," nodded Trudy sagely. "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.
Alexandra Potter
The moment that any life however good stifles you you may be sure it isn't your real life.
Arthur Christopher Benson
You want the truth? I’ve been fucked and betrayed often enough to not trust anybody. And that includes you.” Frank shrugged. “Don’t take it personal.”“Join the club. We meet Tuesdays. We never share the location with each other, and we show up armed.
Aleksandr Voinov
the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.
Jeanette Winterson
When I went out, light of day seemed a darker color than when I went in.
Charles Dickens
Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful.
J.R.R. Tolkien
I think maybe Hell is a place. But you don't have to stay anywhere forever.
Neil Gaiman
I needed a new mystery.
John Fowles
Draco Malfoy is a bad boy!" squeaked Dobby angrily.
J.K. Rowling
I've grieved enough for his life cut short and for mine for running on for so long with so little in it. It's weakness now, but I suppose I am crying out of a general sense of loss. Maybe I am mourning for the human condition.
Rosie Thomas
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses ... for in him also Christ 'vere latitat' - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
C.S. Lewis
People still have the same story, the one where they get born and they do stuff and they die, but now the story means something different to what it meant before.
Neil Gaiman
If I could sum up my poetry in a few well-chosen words, the result might be a poem. Several years ago, when I was asked to say something on this topic, I came up with the notion that for me the making of poems is both a commemoration (a moment captured) and an evocation (the archaeologist manqué side of me digging into something buried and bringing it to light). But I also said that I find the processes that bring poems into being mysterious, and I wouldn't really wish to know them; the thread that links the first unwilled impulse to the object I acknowledge as the completed poem is a tenuous one, easily broken. If I knew the answers to these riddles, I would write more poems, and better ones. "Simple Poem" is as close as I can get to a credo':Simple PoemI shall make it simple so you understand.Making it simple will make it clear for me.When you have read it, take me by the handAs children do, loving simplicity.This is the simple poem I have made.Tell me you understand. But when you doDon't ask me in return if I have saidAll that I meant, or whether it is true.
Anthony Thwaite
But the living must fear death, or they would not struggle to stay alive. from 'The Fallen Kings.
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles