Quotes by British Authors - Page 110

I like animals because they are not consciously cruel and don't betray each other.
Taylor Caldwell
We are all worms but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.
Winston Churchill
Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
W.H. Auden
I advise people not to research radiation unless they are prepared to take the risks to their own health and mental functioning that the various forms of radiation are known to present to the human.
Steven Magee
We, the public, are easily, lethally offended. We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From this high ground we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities. We take pride in our short fuses. Our anger elevates, transcends.
Salman Rushdie
A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.
Stephanie Lennox
On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.
C.S. Lewis
He who for love hath undergone The worst that can befall Is happier thousandfold than one Who never loved at all.
Richard Monckton Milnes
A feeble orange light was flickering in the allotments, low down near the ground. Laura looked hopefully towards it. It was a huge pumpkin, its flesh brick-red, its mouth cut into a crude gash, candle- flame dancing through slits for eyes. There was no sign of Autumn.
Sanjida Kay
Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.
Gerald Brenan
Do you know why you’re here? Shall I tell you why we brought you here? To cure you.To make you sane.
George Orwell
When people are doing their utmost to upset you, it's probably best to just laugh at them.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
No doubt your sword is indeed a beautiful thing. It is a tribute to whoever forged it in bygone ages. There are very few such swords as this one left in the world, but remember, it is only a sword, Matthias! It contains no secret spell, nor holds within its blade any magical power. This sword is made for only one purpose, to kill. It will only be as good or evil as the one who wields it. I know that you intend to use it only for the good of your Abbey, Matthias; do so, but never allow yourself to be tempted into using it in a careless or idle way. It would inevitably cost you your life, or that of your dear ones. Martin the Warrior used the sword only for right and good. This is why it has become a symbol of power to Redwall. Knowledge is gained through wisdom, my friend. Use the sword wisely.
Brian Jacques
Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed, recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged, memos to be circulated, announcements to be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be displayed and diaries to be concealed. Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.
Frank Smith
Krystal flung herself violently off the chair, away from her mother. She was surprised to feel warm liquid flowing down her cheeks, and thought confusedly of blood, but it was tears, only tears, clear and shining on her fingertips when she wiped them away.
J.K. Rowling
She had been trying hourly to ensure that this new friendship remained such, to be certain that it would not slip out of the careful grasp of her fingers and into the darker champers of her heart.
Shamim Sarif
Every world needed an artist.
Stephen Baxter
You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.
Neil Gaiman
Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.
Graham Greene
I can see the caravanserai, like a mirage in the distance. The heat hums. I thought I saw water. What would you have on these trade winds for your comfort?
Suzy Davies
I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children’s books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.
Neil Gaiman
But when she looked at Prue tonight, she saw this was not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving, just descending.
Virginia Woolf
I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.
J.G. Ballard
We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before.
Daphne du Maurier
He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.
J.K. Rowling
You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.
Terry Eagleton
The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
Alexander Pope
Words are the writer's sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They're our enchantment and our temptation
Karl Wiggins
I don't generally feel anything until noon then it's time for my nap.
Bob Hope
Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.
H.A.L. Fisher
Comfort and security are all well and good, but not at the cost of liberty, love and lustiness. The Bohemian knows that money, property and status have little to do with the content of one’s character, and that professional success and widespread celebration have little to do with talent. Of value to the Bohemian is spiritual integrity and creative freedom. The Bohemian would sooner live in poverty than submit to an undesirable job.
Robert Wringham
It's funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & all the rest of it: then at thirty one finds one is a great clumping brute, incapable of appreciating anything finer than a kiss or a kick, roaring our one's hypocrisies at the top of one's voice, thick skinned as a rhino. At least I do.
Philip Larkin
The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.
A.A. Milne
Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf.
George Eliot
A culture finds the gods it needs.
Kevin Crossley-Holland
She's been used to hiding her feelings for so long, no wonder her manner can be a little awkward.
Sophie Kinsella
No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.
Samuel Johnson
No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?""They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer."And what is hell? Can you tell me that?""A pit full of fire.""And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?""No, sir.""What must you do to avoid it?"I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die.
Charlotte Brontë
Revenge is not redress. Revenge is a wheel, and it turns backwards.
Terry Pratchett
In my life Why do I give valuable time To people who don't care if I live or die ?
Morrissey
And what I learned is this: there are places in the world war one feels new, young, and alive again.
Suzanne Joinson
All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot.
Virginia Woolf
Think about it: send SLASH receive. Email is the frenzied killer of proper communication.
Fennel Hudson
Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves "thought experiments." You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment.
Edward de Bono
He was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil. He gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice.
Charles Dickens
The smallest effort is not lost Each wavelet on the ocean tost Aids in the ebb-tide or the flow Each rain-drop makes some floweret blow Each struggle lessens human woe.
Charles Mackay
So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.
H.G.Wells
When Nietszche says, "A new commandment I give to you,be hard" he is really saying, "A new commandment I give to you, be dead." Sensibility is the definition oflife.
G.K. Chesterton
His mind buzzed, excited by new possibilities."About Egg, Book 1 "Making it
Jamie Scallion
Orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy.
William Warburton
He began to read at haphazard. He entered upon each system with a little thrill of excitement, expecting to find in each some guide by which he could rule his conduct; he felt himself like a traveller in unknown countries and as he pushed forward the enterprise fascinated him; he read emotionally, as other men read pure literature, and his heart leaped as he discovered in noble words what himself had obscurely felt.
W Somerset Maugham
Move thy tongue,For silence is a sign of discontent.
Elizabeth Cary
Love and magic are like oil and water--they just don't mix.
Jasper Fforde
Additionally, many widows took over family shops or businesses- and, not uncommonly, ran them better than their dead husbands. Y.pestis [black death germ] turns out to have been something of a feminist.
John Kelly
Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories.
Idries Shah
Pretty soon all of us will be issued with hand scanners. That way when we met another person, whether we know them or not we can scan their ID cards. That way we will know whether to smile, frown, grimace, talk, walk away, laugh, shake their hand, give them a kiss, have a coffee with them, invite them over to your house, do business with them, have sex, go to a football game, have drinks or dinner together. I'm glad that our lives are getting so organized for us, because I would have to hate to make my own decisions concerning my own life.
Anthony T.Hincks
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.
Walter Pater
An effort was made to spread this new materialist atheism with its Communist consequence "by the sword" (as the metaphor goes), that is, by the invasion of neighboring countries with consequent further massacres and the extension of the area of despotic Soviet control... This armed attempt at expansion was checked by Catholic Poland, the most immediately exposed victim, in what has been called "one of the decisive battles of the world.
Hilaire Belloc
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Work begins when the fear of doing nothing at all finally trumps the terror of doing it badly.
Alain de Botton