Quotes by British Authors - Page 100

Life wasn't too bad. The trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in me life. The very thought of it made him miserable.
Spike Milligan
We all tend to think of ourselves as the last unsinning inhabitants of whatever place we live in. We don't usually recognize ourselves as participants in its destruction.
David Owen
Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.
Olaf Stapledon
Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't.
Neil Gaiman
For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it.
Emily Brontë
Even the most misfitting childWho's chanced upon the library's worth,Sits with the genius of the EarthAnd turns the key to the whole world.--"Hear It Again
Ted Hughes
Dark came early and stayed full of lights and the shouts of children.
China Miéville
You know, I know I should be just as panicky as you about the filthy work - one wants to do nothing in the evenings, certainly not spread rotten books around & dredge for a 'line'. It must be like still being a student, with an essay to do after a week's drinking, only you haven't had the drinking. Quite clearly, to me, you aren't a voluntary worker, from the will: you do it by intuitive flashes, more like an act of creation, & when the flashes don't come, as of course they don't, especially when the excess energy of undergraduate days is gone, then it is a hideous unnatural effort.
Philip Larkin
Often one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything - these are sort of 'ideal' poems that one feels ought to be written, but don't because (I fancy) they lack the vital spark of self-interest. A 'real' poem is a pleasure to write.
Philip Larkin
We all have our fears. Anyone who says otherwise is probably scared of admitting it.
Alex Staniforth
I seemed to still be alive. Which was unexpected. I'd feel good about it when I stopped retching my insides up.
Alwyn Hamilton
Never stop learning, and always be ready to teach yourself things you don’t know. The only things you will remember are things you care about.
Jonathan Tepper
Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.
John le Carré
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
Terry Pratchett
The time had finally come when she would have to accept the full power of the Starwife. No longer could she be just Ysabelle. Now she had a land to govern and all the daunting responsibilities that that entailed. The liberty she had experienced since the night she had escaped from the Ring of Banbha seemed to vanish. She was left stripped of her freedom, and only long years of a lonely reign stretched out before her.
Robin Jarvis
perhaps,thought Felix,that's what magic is--physics with a different twist to it.my world just hasn't discovered the twist.
Elizabeth Kay
She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.
John Fowles
Mothers are multi-taskers.
Sophie Kinsella
The Bible is the Word of God: supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, inexpressible in valor, infinite in scope, regenerative in power, infallible in authority, universal in interest, personal in application, inspired in totality. Read it through, write it down, pray it in, work it out, and then pass it on. Truly it is the Word of God. It brings into man the personality of God; it changes the man until he becomes the epistle of God. It transforms his mind, changes his character, takes him on from grace to grace, and gives him an inheritance in the Spirit. God comes in, dwells in, walks in, talks through, and sups with him.
Smith Wigglesworth
I slept and the night rolled over into day like a dog. Another post-meridian awakening - sunshine on empty bottles, tangled clothes. I dozed while the temperature rose.
Matthew Stokoe
I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.
Anna Kavan
Clarissa had a theory in those days - they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people.
Virginia Woolf
I want to build you a house with my bare hands and carry you over the threshold. I want too cook for you every evening and bring you tea in bed in the mornings. I want to read with you in front of an open fire, sipping a glass of wine. I want to drive you to the beach and lie next to you in the sun. I may not be a man of means, bit I want to take care of you as best I can.
Catherine Sanderson
It is good to be brave, it is better to be good; strive to be both.
Justin Huntly McCarthy
He was not of an age but for all time!
Ben Jonson
As for a future life every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague possibilities.
Charles Darwin
The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop.
C.S. Lewis
Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow - James Matthew Barrie
John Charles Harman
In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.
Jeanette Winterson
In real life there is no such person as the average man. There are only particular men, women and children, each with his or her inborn idiosyncrasies of mind and body, and all trying (or becoming compelled) to squeeze their biological diversities into the uniformity of some cultural mold.
Aldous Huxley
There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.
Douglas Adams
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.
John Ruskin
Your father... doesn't work late for you to pinch his dinner.
Susan Cooper
I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?""That is so.""Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."Poirot shrugged his shou
Agatha Christie
It sounds to me, dear, as if your satirist is a bit like a monk. They both take a rather dim view of the world, and both try to do something abou
Tony Hendra
The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
Richard Dawkins
The likelihood of meeting anyone who wouldn't make him feel even lonelier seemed increasingly remote. Life was a dwindling process now, not a building proposition. He couldn't imagine being with someone new, opening up, feeling appreciated and understood, without having to explain his dubious non sequiturs and increasingly arcane or redundant frame of reference.
Peter Nichols
It really is the year 2007. Which means I must be...Oh my God. I'm twenty-eight.I'm old.
Sophie Kinsella
Based on the medical evidence that clearly states that being above 10,000 feet is hazardous to the health of sea level adapted humans, it is clear that all of the manned facilities on top of the 13,796 feet Mauna Kea summit in Hawaii should be removed and the summit restored back to its native environment.
Steven Magee
In a world where you can get a spare kidney, a black-market Picasso or a ticket to ride into space, why can’t I see some actual sex? Some actual fucking from people who want to fuck each other? Some chick in an outfit I halfway respect, having the time of her life? I have MONEY. I’m willing to PAY for this. I AM NOW A 35-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, AND I JUST WANT A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INTERNATIONAL PORN INDUSTRY WHERE I CAN SEE A WOMAN COME. I just want to see a good time.
Caitlin Moran
Maximus was cleaning his blade on the dead man’s wolfskin. ‘You promised him his life,’ the Greek said. ‘No, I said death was his last worry.’ Maximus swung up on to Pale Horse. ‘Is that not so for all of us?
Harry Sidebottom
I'm not really angry at you.I'm just angry at myself for not doing anything.
Anthony T.Hincks
Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her!
Sydney Smith
Don’t hold back because you’re afraid of hurting someone else. If your best friend wants to be a cheerleader and you make the team but she doesn’t, don’t feel guilty. If you end up earning more than your sister, it’s not a betrayal. Your success might be an inspiration for someone else, while limiting yourself to avoid upsetting the balance doesn’t help anyone. Equally, rather than being paralysed by jealousy when someone else is coming out on top, use it to spur you on to greater things. Some of our best achievements will be triggered by envy at seeing someone else fulfilling our secret ambitions.
Rosie Blythe
Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.
Neil Gaiman
My Best Friend and I have spent plenty of time together, despite me being in my First Ever Relationship. This is because friends should always come first.
Holly Smale
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life—the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it—can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
George Eliot
We look before and after, And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.Yet if we could scornHate, and pride, and fear;If we were things bornNot to shed a tear,I know not how thy joy we everShould come near.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side!
Terry Pratchett
It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.
Terry Pratchett
Well packaged, even a falsehood may seem true or feasible.
Steven Redhead
Then they start going on about cancer and how organic living is the way forward, totally ignoring how expensive it is to be organic and that there are a lot of people out there grateful if they can afford regular living.
Lisa O'Donnell
Hard work should be rewarded by good food.
Ken Follett
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
G.K. Chesterton
Hunter could only groan. “What are you doing, Kristen?”“Bringing breakfast.” She replied innocently. “Think of it as thanks for saving my life.”Hunter sat up in bed, looking his usual ruffled morning mess, with extra dark circles under the eyes today. “Technically, I didn’t save your life, Mel did.”“Ok, then think of it as punishment for putting my life at risk.” Kristen shrugged, and helped herself to a piece of toast. “It’s all a ruse, anyway.
K.S. Marsden
Creatures are not entitled to register complaints about their Creator.
J.I. Packer
I sometimes think that I don't have a purpose in this world. I am simply useless and wandering.
Ginger and Rosa
There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
John le Carré
I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn't that happy a child. I liked being alone and creating characters and voices. I think that's when your creativity is developed, when you're young. I liked the world of the imagination because it was an easy place to go to.
David Walliams
Remember: God's grief at the unspeakable things we do to one another is beyond measuring, but so is His mercy. It might seem a terrible thing to say to people who've lost and suffered so much at the hands of hatred and violence. But true courage is not to hate our enemy, any more than to fight and kill him. To love him, to love in the teeth of his hate—that is real bravery. That ought to earn people m-m-medals.
Tony Hendra