Quotes by British Authors - Page 12

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
Percy Bysshe Shelley
You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it’s not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?
Jeanette Winterson
It is strange how you shall hate a man, and yet pity him from the depths.
Richard Llewellyn
[Their marriage] will not be all cakes and ale.... They are too much alike to be the ideal match. Patty is thick-skinned and passionate, too ready to be hurt to the heart by the mere little pinpricks and mosquito bites of life; and Paul is proud and crotchety, and, like the great Napoleon, given to kick the fire with his boots when he is put out. There will be many little gusts of temper, little clouds of misunderstanding, disappointments, and bereavements, and sickness of mind and body; but with all this, they will find their lot so blessed, by reason of the mutual love and sympathy tat, through all the vicissitudes, will surely grow deeper and stronger every day they live together, that they will not know how to conceive a better one.
Ada Cambridge
But it's not Kit's physique that I'm talking about. It's the way he is, the confidence he has that is beyond his years. He speaks softly-I've never seen him lose his temper or shout-and when he walks into a room, It's like he's a magnet and everything, including the air, is drawn to him. Although I know he can strip an automatic weapon in under ten seconds and is trained to lea d men in battle, I've also seen him siniging lullabies to his baby nieces while he cradles them in his arms, and jump off a pier to save a drowning dog.
Mila Gray
All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the sense of sin, which reason suppresses in saner moments.
Bertrand Russell
The reaper does not listen to the harvest.
Terry Pratchett
You can't Google life
Colin Tegerdine
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
J.R.R. Tolkien
Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch
has it ever occurred to you that where there is no anger, there is also no love?
Siobhan Dowd
I added 'writers' to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.
David Mitchell
Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad
[of Nan Goldin] In an afterword to Ballad written in 2012, she declared: ‘I decided as a young girl I was going to leave a record of my life and experience that no one could rewrite or deny.
Olivia Laing
The choir sang and the old man sang and Drake couldn't sing, and suddenly he began to cry because of the music, because of the sound of the boys' voices, because of what they might turn into.
Sarah Winman
Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.
Charles Darwin
Mr Brocklehurst: Do you know where the wicked go after death?Jane Eyre: They go to hell, was my ready and orthodox answer.. . . Mr: What must you do to avoid it? Jane: [Thinking] I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come was objectionable: " I must keep in good health , and not die.
Charlotte Brontë
Beauty is truth, truth beauty
John Keats
The wrong answer is the right answer to a different question.
Paul Sloane
Bustle about Noddy, or we shant be in time to snabble any of the lobster patties.
Georgette Heyer
Your hopes and dreams are like a giant helium balloon, tugging on your hand to take you above the clouds, to that quiet place of peace and contentment. All you have to do is stop resisting, to let go - and ALLOW your hopes and dreams to take you there.
Curtis Rivers
These shoes were made for dancing, not propping up a bar stool.""Those shoes were made for something," Alex said. "And it sure as hell isn't dancing.
Christina Phillips
And this new air was so delicious, and all his old life seemed so far away, that he forgot for a moment about his bruises and his aching muscles.
C.S. Lewis
A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.
Salman Rushdie
The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
G.K. Chesterton
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy mightTo that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light,That doth both shine, and give us sight to see.
Philip Sidney
The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.
Stephen Hawking
You see a person's true Colors when you are no longer beneficial to their life. But there are also the other onces who burn like candles. They burn until theny give others Light!
Lily Amis
They do not call him the terror of husbands and lovers for no reason...
Andrea Zuvich
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over
Jerome K. Jerome
...what about the stone, Mr Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?""What of it?""Well, how can that be real?""Prove that it is not," said Xenophilius.Hermione looked out
J.K. Rowling
They say love and hate are closely tied, that they can turn at a moment’s notice.
Laura Lam
Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished.
Alastair Reynolds
A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.
Wallis Duchess of Windsor
The castle of Cair Paravel on its little hill towered up above them; before them were the sands, with rocks and little pools of salt water, and seaweed, and the smell of the sea and long miles of bluish-green waves breaking for ever and ever on the beach. And oh, the cry of the seagulls! Have you ever heard it? Can you remember?
C.S. Lewis
She, who had never liked weddings, had allowed herself this fantasy. Her wedding day to Rory. A pretty church in Sussex, festooned with spring flowers. Rows of relatives, and her, Elle, floating down the aisle in cream silk to 'The arrival of queen Sheba', with eyes only for him... Rory, slightly rumpled, slightly scared, her love, her only one.But that wasn't how it had turned out. She knew she was OK, watching him, in fact she was happy for him, happy for Libby. But she couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the girl she'd been, who'd loved him so much. She was still dreaming somewhere, hoping this day would come.
Harriet Evans
if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.
Lee Child
It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.
Anthony Burgess
He liked to address every man in his own language, as a good European should.
H.G.Wells
We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique.
C.S. Lewis
Two spacemen touching in anti-gravity is like a kiss. But then, there is nothing like a kiss. A kiss is a rare bird. The first sip of champagne. The fleeting glimpse of a shooting star. The kiss is uniquely human. We exchange bodily fluids with a kiss. A great kiss is like eating melon on a picnic. Like diving into a warm sea. A French kiss is a battle of tongues where everyone wins.
Chloe Thurlow
That was what murder was-as easy as that!But afterwards you went on remembering...
Agatha Christie
The silence was enchanting. Infinite space seemed to enter it, and my spirit, alone with the stars, seemed capable of any adventure.
W Somerset Maugham
It’s a lot harder to get someone out of your life than it is to let them in, so take your time!
Robert Tew
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
Yup! I'll live stupid! Because I know what I do, and what we as a species do will one day come together and make a difference. We matter!
Charles Lee
To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ Who is our life.
W. Ian Thomas
We'd rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal.
C.S. Lewis
The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes imposs
Salman Rushdie
Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Have a chocolate-covered raisin,” he said.“They look like rat droppings,” said the Chair.The Dean peered at them in the gloom.“So that’s it,” he said. “The bag fell on the floor a minute ago, and I thought there seemed rather a lot.
Terry Pratchett
Sex is not about reproduc-tion, gender is not about males and females, courtship is not aboutpersuasion, fashion is not about beauty, and love is not about affec-tion. Below the surface of every banality and cliche there lies irony,cynicism, and profundity.
Matt Ridley
Show business is like sex. When it's wonderful it's wonderful. But when it isn't very good it's still all right.
Max Wall
If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.
James Lovelock
His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the degree to which they accepted his.
Paul Johnson
The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence to be always calm ... to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Cyril Connolly
It seemed to him he had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush; the life of the town was itself under a spell--so unnaturally, up and down the whole prospect of known and rather ugly objects, the blankness and the silence lasted. Had they ever, he asked himself, the hard-faced houses, which had begun to look livid in the dim dawn, had they ever spoken so little to any need of his spirit? Great builded voids, great crowded stillnesses put on, often, in the heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort of sinister mask, and it was of this large collective negation that Brydon presently became conscious--all the more that the break of day was, almost incredibly, now at hand, proving to him what night he had made of it.
Henry James
Anyway, there is one thing I have learned and that is not to dress uncomfortably, in styles which hurt: winklepicker shoes that cripple your feet and tight pants that squash your balls. Indian clothes are better.
George Harrison
Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
John Wesley