Quotes by British Authors - Page 135

Music touches places beyond our touching.
Keith Bosley
He had sometimes wondered if the real reason why men sought danger was that only thus could they find the companionship and solidarity which they unconsciously craved.
Arthur C. Clarke
Mad – empty – crazy – lost – dying... I was all of these things and nothing as well, because even though I breathed and moved, I was not alive.
Melanie Cusick-Jones
While grief is fresh every attempt to divert it only irritates.
Samuel Johnson
Adiction to reading....There are worse things in the world to be Addicted to.
Christy Mair
It was March. The days of March creeping gustily on like something that man couldn't hinder and God wouldn't hurry.
Enid Bagnold
When she turned to see me smiling. It was an awkward smile, but you only really know what a smile means when you own the face behind it. Everyone else just sees the smile they expected it to be.
Nathan Filer
A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.
T.S Eliot
In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.
Beryl Markham
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it
Alain de Botton
Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.
Matt Haig
They were the Saturday Club, a secret society of which only the four of them were aware and which none other could join.
Ben Elton
To some people, there is no noise on earth as exciting as the sound of three or four big fan-jet engines rising in pitch, as the plane they are sitting in swivels at the end of the runway and, straining against its brakes, prepares for takeoff. The very danger in the situation is inseparable from the exhilaration it yields. You are strapped into your seat now, there is no way back, you have delivered yourself into the power of modern technology. You might as well lie back and enjoy it.
David Lodge
I think it is silly to be amateur about anything when one has an opportunity of learning.
Beverley Nichols
I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
W Somerset Maugham
Pour, varlet, pour the waterThe water steaming hot!A spoonful for each man of usAnother for the pot!
Thomas Babington Macaulay
I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.
Jerome K. Jerome
Contentment comes from wanting what we need, not needing what we want.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
Jane Austen
I find it kind of funny. I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.
Tears For Fears
I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring a little lower still, and it merely goes out.
C.S. Lewis
Alas, is even Love too weak to unlock the heart and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel?
Matthew Arnold
The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list.
John Derbyshire
Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.
Barbara Pym
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
P.G. Wodehouse
Man is not the creature of circumstances circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents and man is more powerful than matter.
Benjamin Disraeli
Jesus is compelling in the way the discovery of the stars or the experience of a one-of-a-kind romance is compelling. His presence draws you in to the deep.
Michael Spencer
He swatted at her with his book. "Shut up and read, will you?"He lay back down and closed his eyes. Emma glanced over to check that he was smiling, and smiled too.
David Nicholls
Oh, they don't allow the Bible in Heaven, Miss Mary...It contains far too much sex and violence.
Bryan Talbot
New landscapes, new customs. The accumulation of memories. A long life is not a question of years. A man without memories might reach the age of a hundred and feel that his life had been a very brief one.
Graham Greene
After having so nobly disentangled themselves from the shackles of Parental Authority, by a Clandestine Marriage, they were determined never to forfeit the good opinion they had gained in the World, in so doing, by accepting any proposals of reconciliation that might be offered them by their Fathers – to their farther trial of their noble independence however they never were exposed.
Jane Austen
This world today makes one by the day a recluse
Siân Lavinia Anaïs Valeriana
When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose—not simply accept—the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person.
George Orwell
It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
Christopher Hitchens
The school teacher is certainly underpaid as a child minder but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.
John Osborne
There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.
Theodore Dalrymple
Storm clouds will always ignite the darker side of my passion.
Anthony T.Hincks
Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)
Idries Shah
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but paranoia was what tied it up in a sack and buried it in wet concrete.
Kate Griffin
Madame Kovarian: The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules.The Doctor: Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.
Steven Moffat
We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense.
Dennis Potter
Problems arise when (especially) theologians use such metaphorical language without realizing that that is what they are doing, and without even realizing that there is a distinction between metaphor and reality – saying something like: ‘It is not important whether Jesus really fed the five thousand. What matters is what the idea of the story means to us.’ Actually it is important, because millions of devout people do believe the Bible is literally true.
Richard Dawkins
Living this long's not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky.
Terry Pratchett
Try again. No no no, eyes up, eyes up! When you bow to someone you look at them, not at the floor. Don't look at her in the eye though lad, that's rude. And not THERE, either.
Stephen Deas
Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.
Saki
Good BonesLife is short, though I keep this from my children.Life is short, and I’ve shortened minein a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,a thousand deliciously ill-advised waysI’ll keep from my children. The world is at leastfifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservativeestimate, though I keep this from my children.For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,sunk in a lake. Life is short and the worldis at least half terrible, and for every kindstranger, there is one who would break you,though I keep this from my children. I am tryingto sell them the world. Any decent realtor,walking you through a real shithole, chirps onabout good bones: This place could be beautiful,right? You could make this place beautiful.
Maggie Smith
She was unique: there was something abnormal about her, and it was that abnormal something that made her magnetic.
Ken Follett
I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.
Peter Ackroyd
I only want to catch you,” Michael explained. “I won’t hurt you.” “No! No!” the star crackled desperately. “That’s wrong! I’m supposed to die!” “But I could save you if you’d let me catch you,” Michael told it gently.“No!” cried the star. “I’d rather die!
Diana Wynne Jones
Oh God, my stomach must have won a medal- it's doing a lap of honour now.
Ali McNamara
...I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mommy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, "It's me, your father," but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell.
Keith Richards
In any theological struggle, the first thousand years are always the bitterest.
Philip Jenkins
Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.
Jane Austen
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
Isaac Newton
It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed one: which is about the severest criticism our civilization could have.
Jan Struther
I have called this principle by which each slight variation if useful is preserved by the term natural selection.
Charles Darwin
God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.
Alan W. Watts
One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to beloved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannotcleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have neverloved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughtstoo much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.
Elizabeth Gaskell
DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work.
Peter Ackroyd
Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust "Mothers of Borogravia!" and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust?Very nearly everyone, come to think of it...
Terry Pratchett