Quotes by British Authors - Page 117

Hardly anyone understands the principles behind magic,"scoffed Betony. "It's too difficult.
Elizabeth Kay
It's not what I'd want for at my funeral. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when the pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie.
Neil Gaiman
That is the beauty of the Common Law it is a maze and not a motorway.
Lord Diplock
I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.
Celia Rees
The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
C.S. Lewis
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man
T.S Eliot
Back therefore we find ourselves returning. Back to the wisdom of the plough; back to the wisdom of those who follow the sea. It is all a matter of the wheel coming full-circle. For the sophisticated system of mental reactions to which we finally give our adherence is only the intellectualised reproduction of what more happily constituted natures, without knowing what they possess, possess. Thus between true philosophers and the true simple people there is a magnetic understanding; whereas, the clever ones whose bastard culture only divorces them from the wisdom of the earth remain pilloried and paralysed on the prongs of their own conceit".
John Cowper Powys
Barbarians are all alike... sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman says.
Rudyard Kipling
Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.
Stevie Smith
You see, I don't think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12….
C.S. Lewis
Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open... there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation; — talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting around us all day long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it! — in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account of that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long!
John Ruskin
He knew clearly enough that his imagination was growing traitor to him, and yet at times it seemed the ship he sailed in, his fellow-passengers, the sailors, the wide sea, were all part of a filmy phantasmagoria that hung, scarcely veiling it, between him and a horrible real world. Then the Porroh man, thrusting his diabolical face through that curtain, was the one real and undeniable thing. At that he would get up and touch things, taste something, gnaw something, burn his hand with a match, or run a needle into himself.("Pollock And The Porrah Man")
H.G.Wells
There seemed to be endless obstacles-it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.
Joanna Field
empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble.
Simon Baron-Cohen
The chef who cooks without a song on his lips cannot hope to infuse the right carefree improvisatory note into his art.
James Hamilton-Paterson
His lone withdrawing figure blended anonymously with the darkness, Dr Raven's quick, light steps becoming gradually distant, drowned out by the clicking staccato rush of trains, the steady drip of rainwater, and the clock of a nearby church as it heralded the hour
Suzy Davies
Discover the inner beauty and wonder within your heart. When you open then follow your Heart your life will become truly wonderful.
Steven Redhead
I'm going to keep going until I succeed — or die. Don't think I don't know how this might end. I've known it for years.
J.K. Rowling
The mystery of the MAGIC BATHROOM will be revealed unto thee...The table next to the sink is for flashcards. I say a Monty Python skit called, "Every sperm is sacred," and it gave me the idea that, "every piss is sacred." Meaning, why not look at flashcards while voiding.Mozart liked to write letters while on the loo. He wrote, "I think it only fitting to write while shitting." This gave me the idea to read while....If knowledge is money, and money is gold, then this is modern day alchemy.Feces (wasted time) is turned into gold (knowledge)...People often ask, "where do you find so much time to read? How can you remember so well?"Well, there's your answer, the Magic Bathroom.
Peter Rogers
My life will be what I make it," he told her. "That is true for all of us all the time. We cannot know what the future will bring or how the events of the future will make us feel. We cannot even plan and feel any certainty that our most carefully contrived plans will be put into effect. Could I have predicted what happened to me in the Peninsula? Could you have predicted what happened to you in Cornwall? But those things happened to us nevertheless. And they changed our plans and our dreams so radically that we both might have been excused for giving up, for never planning or dreaming again, for never living again. That too is a choice we all have to make.
Mary Balogh
Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.
Idries Shah
People who say they don't have time to read simply don't want to.
Julie Rugg
What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.
John Lubbock
Data that comes subliminally and is acted upon will look like luck or inspiration.
Peter Redgrove
Concentrate on the here and now. The future can take care of itself.
Christopher G. Nuttall
I had entered a world that no one with an evolved sense of joie de vivre would touch with a barge pole - it's called "Joining the Property Market" and it trumps war for stress!
Tyne O'Connell
Falling in love is like leaping from a cliff. Your brain screams that it’s not a good idea and that hurt and pain will inevitably come to you. But yourheart believes you can soar, glide and fly.
Marie Coulson
My wife is a thief...She takes the last cookieTakes forever to get readyShe takes her time in the showerTakes all of the hot waterShe takes my favorite seat on the couchTakes the high road when I lose controlMy wife is a thief...She took my last nameTook the time to get to know me, love meShe took the back seat and let me leadTook on motherhood and the emotional toll that it bringsShe took care of me the many times that I've gotten sickTook on the pain of pregnancy so that the Jackson legacy would live onMy wife takes, and takes, and takes...I'm so proud of my perpetual thief who stole my heart and won't give it back.
David Jackson
You have striven so hard and so long to compel life. Can't you now slowly change and let life slowly drift into you ... let the invisible life steal into you and slowly possess you.
D.H. Lawrence
There was a patient who sat with her family in a circle around her, all holding hands. Sister Philomena asked if they would like to join her for prayers and they said yes, they would. They closed their eyes as Sister Philomena whispered the words and I thought this must be the nearest humans get to whatever God is, when they hold hands and listen.
Rachel Joyce
At what point do you give up - decide enough is enough? There is only one answer really. Never.
Tabitha Suzuma
My early and invincible love of reading--I would not exchange for the treasures of India.
Edward Gibbon
I don't know whether to be proud or appalled that danger, blood and death inspire you so.
Samantha Young
You can teach a bubbly person to repair shoes, but you can't put the personality into a grumpy cobbler.John Timpson
David Shindler
Try to capture what you can't bear to be without
Rosie Thomas
Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace.
Terri Windling
Philosophy consists in moderating each life so that many lives will fit together with as much liberty and justice as will keep them together: and not so much as will make them fly apart, when the harm will be the greater.
Tom Stoppard
What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted."Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am I to quarrel with that? Written with Fowler on his left hand and Roget on his right. Stale, flat and, alas, rapidly becoming unprofitable...""What was he like as a person?" asked Dalgliesh."Oh, difficult. Very difficult, poor fellow! I thought you knew him? A precise, self-opinionated, nervous little man perpetually fretting about his sales, his publicity or his book jackets. He overvalued his own talent and undervalued everyone else's, which didn't exactly make for popularity.""A typical writer, in fact?" suggested Dalgliesh mischievously.
P.D. James
I met Baba Yaga at the end of childhood – past pigtails and fairytales, but not quite ready to give up on make-believe.
Kirsty Logan
So imagine that the lovely moon is playing just for you - everything makes music if you really want it to.
Giles Andreae
The spiritual work builds upon awareness, increases consciousness, transforms it, merges it with the divine, and this is how to reach true spirituality in life.
Belsebuub
Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feeling: This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm solid, I'm alive! Don't you like this?
George Orwell
There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…)A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
Ghosts are just our minds telling us that subconsciously we feel guilty about something we should have done, would have done, but never took the time!
Nell Rose
She was a logical child, as far as children go. She did not understand how such a nice, kind, good God as the one they preyed to, could condemn the whole earth for sinfulness and flood it, or condemn his only Son to a disgusting death on behalf of everyone. This death did not seem to have done much good.
A.S. Byatt
Sometimes before your luck can be good,someone else's has to be bad
Maisie Mosco
I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.
Julian Barnes
In my own shire, if I was sadHomely comforters I had:The earth, because my heart was sore,Sorrowed for the son she bore;And standing hills, long to remain,Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.And bound for the same bourn as I,On every road I wandered by,Trod beside me, close and dear,The beautiful and death-struck year:Whether in the woodland brownI heard the beechnut rustle down,And saw the purple crocus paleFlower about the autumn dale;Or littering far the fields of MayLady-smocks a-bleaching lay,And like a skylit water stoodThe bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads,The season range the country roads,But here in London streets I kenNo such helpmates, only men;And these are not in plight to bear,If they would, another's care.They have enough as 'tis: I seeIn many an eye that measures meThe mortal sickness of a mindToo unhappy to be kind.Undone with misery, all they canIs to hate their fellow man;And till they drop they needs must stillLook at you and wish you ill.
A.E. Housman
Terrorism is the war of the weak and war is the terrorism of the strong.
Martin Bell
Friends don't leave friends behind to wash dishes for yetis!
Philip Reeve
The modern man has become a machine for survival, which is largely the result of work of chemicals and genetic codes.
Lynne McTaggart
There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't. Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception.
Richard Dawkins
Knowing what she did to him made her feel powerful, just as knowing what he did to her made her feel weak.
Kate Meader
I'm a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more. We don't change. We hold on. I say great good will come of it. This is the true King of Narnia we've got here: a true King, coming back to true Narnia. And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King.
C.S. Lewis
And the pebbles fight each other as rocks/And my father bends among them/Two hands outstretching up to me/Not that I can hear.
Joe Strummer
The perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.
Angela Carter
I said that my mother is mad. I said that. But you might not see it. I mean, you might not think that anything I've told you proves she is mad. But there are different kinds of madness. Some madness doesn't act mad to begin with, sometimes it will knock politely at the door, and when you let it in, it'll simply sit in the corner without a fuss - and grow. Then one day, maybe many months after your decision to take your son out of school and isolate him in a house for reasons that got lost in your grief, one day that madness will stir in the chair, and it will say to him, 'You look pale.
Nathan Filer
Blameless people are always the most exasperating.
George Eliot
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Lightthrough whom is splintered from a single Whiteto many hues, and endlessly combinedin living shapes that move from mind to mind.
J.R.R. Tolkien
That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life but in a new way.
Doris Lessing