Quotes by British Authors - Page 92

Those who remarked in the countenance of this young hero a dissolute audacity mingled with extreme haughtiness ... could not yet deny to his countenance that sort of comeliness which belongs to an open set of features, well formed by nature, modeled by art to the usual rules of courtesy, yet so far frank and honest, that they seemed as if they disclaimed to conceal the natural working of the soul.
Walter Scott
Or he was simply pretending—like many drinkers, he liked to think each new day drew a line under the day before.
Ian McEwan
There's no thrilling anticipation of the day's first cup of coffee...nor the eye-closing delight of that first swallow of sauvignon blanc in the evening. We cats have no access to everyday mood-enhancing substances. Apart from humble catnip, there is no pharmaceutical refuge if we're suffering from boredom, depression, existential crisis, or even an everyday headache.
David Michie
Yearn for the opposite, to buck the trend, to be different.
Fennel Hudson
When you read," the man whispered, "you discover who you really are. You find traces of yourself, little pieces you didn't know were there.
Malcom McNeill
Time did not compose her.
Jane Austen
Luke diagnosed himself to be in love, and sought no cure for the disease.
Sarah Perry
The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited but was defined before it existed.
G.K. Chesterton
People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a “U-turn,” or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or . . . Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality.
Jamie Whyte
The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the experts consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so. (The proviso is essential, because measures which arouse serious resentment are seldom advantageous, whatever merits they may have otherwise.) The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-minded enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others.
Bertrand Russell
The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
W.H. Auden
He had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months he had been possessed by the imagination of her. She had been distant and closed away, a princess in a tower, and his imagination’s work had been all to make her present, all of her, to his mind and senses, the quickness of her and the mystery, the whiteness of her, which was part of her extreme magnetism, and the green look of those piercing or occluded eyes. Her presence had been unimaginable, or more strictly, only to be imagined. Yet here she was, and he was engaged in observing the ways in which she resembled, or differed from, the woman he dreamed, or reached for in sleep, or would fight for.
A.S. Byatt
I am sure that music was never meant to sound this harsh, this painful.
Tabitha Suzuma
What people intuitively grasped was the new efficiences in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing were changing the definition of what was commercially viable across the board. The best way to describe these forces is that they are turning unprofitable customers, products, and markets into profitable ones. Although this phenomenon is most obvious in entertainment and media, it's an easy leap to eBay to see it at work more broadly, from cars to crafts. Seen broadly, it's clear that the story of the Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance - what happens when the bottlenecks and stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone.
Chris Anderson
When my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil. And I will not demand the exact spot, but let it be within this country Horace and I have spent the years roaming contentedly.
Kazuo Ishiguro
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
William Godwin
Gonzo's father told his son to grieve without reservation or embarrassment until he could grieve solemnly and inwardly, and then finally to hang up his tears and wear them only occasionally, as befits the true men of the heart. Grief is not a thing to be ashamed of or suppressed, he told Gonzo. Nor yet is it a thing to cherish. Feel it, inhabit it and leave it behind. It is right, but it is not the end.
Nick Harkaway
People don't realize that the future is just now, but later.
Russell Brand
If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?
C.S. Lewis
The porters could always be coaxed to continue a little further through driving rain by the mere suggestion of a Pot Noodle at the end.
Tahir Shah
But thou art with us, with us in the past,The present, with us in the times to come.There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,No languor, no dejection, no dismay,No absence scarcely can there be, for thoseWho love as we do. Speed thee well!
William Wordsworth
It's all about vanity, isn't it? I think it says something about people if they can't do it
Gwendoline Riley
I just cash in on the fact that I’m good looking, and I’ve got a nice figure and girls like me.
Sid Vicious
Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
George Eliot
​It is not enough to write and deliver a funeral service for a grieving family…you must love them too.
Caroline Louise Whittle
The sunshine of the mind.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
All the love, learning and opportunities that you seek come from being open to life not being closed throughout it.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
They say that depression makes you see everything in a negative light. I disagree. It makes you see things for what they are. It makes you take off the fucking rose-tinted glasses and look around and see the world as it really is- cruel, harsh and unfair. It makes you see people in their true colours- stupid, shallow and self-absorbed. All that ridiculous optimism, all that carpe diem and life-is-what-you-make-of-it. Words, jsut empty words in an attempt to give meaning to an existence taht is both doomed and futile.
Tabitha Suzuma
We should know who they are," I said, "before we kill them. That's just being polite.
Bernard Cornwell
The moral of the story is even though that seemed like the end of the world back then, right now I can look back on it and laugh. And if anyone is going through something similar right now just know it will get better.
Phil Lester
...intelligence nowadays is all about application: it is the ability 'to take in a complex system and learn its rules on the fly'. For young people, this ability is second nature. Any fool knows that, if you need a new and unfamiliar VCR programmed in a hurry, you commandeer any small passing child to do it.
Lynne Truss
[For the genuine believer] There are moments in life when God's pursuit of us seems like that of a persistent mosquito, constantly buzzing around our heads and causing us pain, and we are utterly powerless to shake him off.
Ian M. Duguid
Control yourself, it is not worth it. You will regret your rudeness afterwards, your sensitive nature will be troubled
Leila Aboulela
The dark edge of the moor and the Cow and Calf rock are crisp against the blue-black sky. I can’t see anyone outside, watching us. As I shut the door behind me, I hear a noise. It came from the hall. I feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
Sanjida Kay
. . . when the horror of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling or however important, seem saturated with his one great sorrow.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Oh, sheep. I've lost all my sobbing colours.
Dave McKean
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT /MEANT/ TO BE SAFE.
Terry Pratchett
I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from His mercy.
Evelyn Waugh
The greatest managers in the world do not have much in common. But despite their differences, these great managers do share one thing: Before they do anything else, they first break all the rules of conventional wisdom.
Marcus Buckingham
We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody [behind the Moral Law]. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.
C.S. Lewis
Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!
Samuel Johnson
He who laughs most, learns best
John Cleese
Thou hast been called O sleep! the friend of woe But 'tis the happy who have called thee so.
Robert Southey
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits./ A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong/ For such despite they cast on female wits;/ If what I do prove well, it won't advance,/ They'll say it's stolen, or else, it was by chance.
Anne Bradstreet
Individuality and creativity are slowly dampened by a normal job with normal people.
Fennel Hudson
We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
Alan Moore
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
J.R.R. Tolkien
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is right.
Rudyard Kipling
Drinking water neither makes a man sick nor in debt nor his wife a widow.
John Neale
If you think that your hardest problem is what color shoes to wear.You should get out more!
Anthony T.Hincks
It’s tough, but if you want to survive, sometimes you have to do the seemingly impossible.
Adele Rose
Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.
Graham Greene
And when the Duke of Alva ordered three hundred Citizens to be put to Death together at Antwerp, a Lady who saw the Sight was presently afterwards deliver'd of a Child without a Head. So lives the Power of Imagination even in this Rationall Age.
Peter Ackroyd
...For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.
H. Rider Haggard
That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.
Jane Austen
Ensuring possibility is kept alive is imperative.
Steven Redhead
But dying is no easy trick. And suicide can't be put on a list of Things To Do in between cleaning the grill pan and leveling the sofa leg with a brick. It is the decision not to do, to un-do; a kiss blown at oblivion. No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It is for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men.
Zadie Smith
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaWisdom: Something you can learn without knowing it.
Idries Shah
when we look up, it widens our horizons. we see what a little speck we are in the universe, so insignificant, and we all take ourselves so seriously, but in the sky, there are no boundaries. No differences of caste or religion or race.
Julia Gregson
Darling Daddy,Poor Saffy. She had a big fight in the boys toilets on Monday, did you know? A very big fight and Sarah helped and it was terrifying. Said a boy in my class who has a brother who was there.Saffy washed her hands and said Never Ever Never Dare You Touch My Brother. (Indigo). And the plug holes were blocked with hair.Love from Rose.-Sarah's mother has given us soup. Soup soup soup and then it was all gone.L.F.R.
Hilary McKay