Quotes by British Authors - Page 142

I won’t stay,” I warned him. “I won’t try to fight for you anymore. This is it. If you walk away it’s not for me. I won’t ever think that. I will always, always blame you for this. For ruining us.
Samantha Young
The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.
Richard Dawkins
It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it's for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn't matter where on what, it's the light itself, against the darkness, it's what's left of God's purpose when you take away God.
Tom Stoppard
It's Halloween,The night we all play,Trick or treat,We won't go away.Be we ghoul or goblin, ghost,We'll knock on your door,To see who scares you the most.But cringe not in fear,Or cry out in pain,Cause it's only a game,Oh, what a shame.But don't despair,In the cold night air,Because we'll be back,And then you'll be scared!But not just one,Or even two.And so we bid you,A sweet adieu.
Anthony T.Hincks
Whatever man imagines is possible
Julie Andrews Edwards
There should be as much difference between the worldling and the Christian, as between hell and heaven, between destruction and eternal life.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
...the pleasures of the world are chiefly folly, and the business of it mostly knavery, and both nothing better than vanity; the men of pleasure tearing one another to pieces from the emulation of spending money, and the men of business from envy in getting it.
Henry Fielding
I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.
Terry Pratchett
Tickles are what power my giggle machine.
Anthony T.Hincks
Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.
V.S. Pritchett
When people talk about their great past they're usually trying to excuse the mediocre present.
Terry Pratchett
They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.
Charles Dickens
He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw- knewit, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent deliriumof his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness.
Aldous Huxley
If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The power of belief gives legitimacy to whatever may be necessary.
Steven Redhead
God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
J.M. Barrie
The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope and charity. Now… the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be…charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
G.K. Chesterton
...and spend my days surrounded by wise books, - bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.
H.G.Wells
And you who seek to know me,know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not,unless you know the Mystery:For if that which you seek,you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.
Doreen Valiente
In necessary things unity in doubtful things liberty in all things charity.
Richard Baxter
It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
Daphne Fielding
I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.
Jeanette Winterson
Twice, in half an hour, Hetty had held up Miss Barlow's plans, and prevented her from moving as quickly as possible on to the next pleasure. Miss Barlow liked her life to be a steady movement towards pleasure. While she was having one, she was thinking about the next and what she should wear while she had that.
Stella Gibbons
To find your way you must first take the steps
Martin Powell
Conchar is an ancient Gaelic term for those who admire the king of all hunters: the wolf.To some, the wolf is a magnificent beast, the pinnacle of predatory evolution. To others, the wolf is a thing of nightmare.
Matt Hilton
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.
Charlotte Brontë
Fictions are merely frozen dreams, linked images with some semblance of structure. They are not to be trusted, no more than the people who create them.
Neil Gaiman
You don't know much," he murmurs. "You know all the wrong things." "Wrong? Not to me." He shakes his head. He looks so sincere. "Try it," he whispers. A challenge, daring me, and he cocks his head to one side and smiles his crooked, dazzling smile. I gasp, and I'm Eve in the Garden of Eden, and he's the serpent, and I cannot resist.
E.L. James
On the morning appointed for her departure Tess awoke before dawn — at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute save for one prophetic bird, who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence, as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.
Thomas Hardy
This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze.
Kazuo Ishiguro
There's a name for people with an interest in the moon," Alex said. "They're called lunatics.
Anthony Horowitz
Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.
Richard K. Morgan
Arrogance created to project a self-image of superiority is the very trait that demonstrates to others deeply hidden inferiority.
Sam Owen
It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.
Anna Wintour
I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.
Charles Dickens
That day -- Monday, 25 February 1980 -- unfolded, in the context of British politics, much like any other day. Government, in those days, happened rather like a tree falling in a forest when there was no one there to witness it. For those among the Great British Public who wanted to believe that something was happening, the assumption was that something was indeed most probably happening, while for those who still needed to see it, or hear it, to believe it, there remained a high degree of doubt that anything was happening at all.
Graham McCann
Complexity is not an aesthetic criterion. It is a quality associated only with division and organization of labor.
Christopher Caudwell
The moment you establish a line of communication between two points, you subtly change both. That is also true for the way the brain is affected by the mind.
David Amerland
In the dark I rest,unready for the light which dawnsday after day,eager to be shared.Black silk, shelter me.I needmore of the night before I openeyes and heartto illumination. I must stillgrow in the dark like a rootnot ready, not ready at all.
Denise Levertov
The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there.
Joanne Harris
At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner frequented by lorry drivers who have either just unloaded or or are waiting to pick up their cargo. Anyone nursing a disappointment with domestic life would find relief in this tiled, brightly lit cafeteria with its smells of fries and petrol, for it has the reassuring feel of a place where everyone is just passing through--and which therefore has none of the close-knit or convivial atmosphere which could cast a humiliating light on one's own alienation. It suggests itself as an ideal location for Christmas lunch for those let down by their families.
Alain de Botton
For the hackneyed art of lying without injury to anyone, Rushbrook, to his shame, was proficient.
Elizabeth Inchbald
The goal is not simply to 'work hard, play hard.' The goal is to make our work and our play indistinguishable.
Simon Sinek
Scared people did scary things sometimes,
Michael Grant
It's because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That's the reason.
Alexander McCall Smith
...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.
Jeanette Winterson
Like everything in life, it is not what happens to you but how you respond to it that counts.
Steve Backley
I'm bored of it all being miserable. I just want something to change. There's nothing wrong with that is there?
Sharon Duggal
Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything.
Neil Gaiman
A law of nature is not a formula drawn up by a legislator, but a mere summary of the observed facts — a 'bundle of facts.' Things do not act in a particular way because there is a law, but we state the 'law' because they act in that way.
Joseph McCabe
the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water
Virginia Woolf
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
Christopher Hitchens
The hardest thing in the world is to be original. It seems like our heads are filled with banalities and clichés. You have to keep digging deeper and deeper to try and find a fresh new seam that hasn't been explored.
Chloe Thurlow
By his [God's] help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty. If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavor to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be hereafter.
Anne Brontë
Love is an optical illusion that makes you believe the object of your affection is the most beautiful person in the world.
Tom Holt
Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.
J.I. Packer
Before the beginning of yearsThere came to the making of manTime, with a gift of tears;Grief, with a glass that ran;Pleasure, with pain for leaven;Summer, with flowers that fell;Remembrance, fallen from heaven,And madness risen from hell;Strength without hands to smite;Love that endures for a breath;Night, the shadow of light,And Life, the shadow of death.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
If the pirate with a scarf had been more poetically minded he’d have thought that her eyes were like a thousand emeralds, glittering in a far-off pirate treasure chest. But he wasn’t, so he just thought that she had really really green eyes, a bit like seaweed.
Gideon Defoe
Home is in my hair, my lips, my arms, my thighs, my feet and my hands. I am my own home. And when I wake up crying in the morning, thinking of how lonely I am, I pinch my skin, tug at my hair, remind myself that I am alive. Remind myself to step outside and greet the morning. Remind myself that it’s all about forward motion. It’s all about change. It’s all about that elusive state. Freedom.
Diriye Osman