Quotes by British Authors - Page 152

Poetry is the sound of the human animal.
Suniti Namjoshi
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
Julian Barnes
A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even if she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children's feet for the greater benefit of the family.
Philippa Gregory
We are children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.
Peter Atkins
And what is enlightenment anyway but delusions we can live with?
Jeanette Winterson
Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive luxury in our life—and happy the man who has been able to enjoy it from his very child hood.
Friedrich Max Müller
Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone.
J.R.R. Tolkien
For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.
C.S. Lewis
You know, I sometimes think that we Sort too soon....
J.K. Rowling
Nature felt no change, and was ever young.
Elizabeth Gaskell
HELP!”I race to the square, crossing it, looking all around, listening out-..It’s empty.Viola’s breathing heavy in my arms .And Haven is empty.I reach the middle of the square.I don’t see nor hear a soul.I spin around again.“HELP!” I cry.But there’s no one.Haven’s completely empty.There ain’t hope here after all.
Patrick Ness
But dying is no easy trick. And suicide can't be put on a list of Things To Do in between cleaning the grill pan and leveling the sofa leg with a brick. It is the decision not to do, to un-do; a kiss blown at oblivion. No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It is for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men.
Zadie Smith
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but absence also dulls the memory and then we tend to forget who we were missing in the first place.
Anthony T.Hincks
I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head.
P.G. Wodehouse
Why do I prefer boys? Because of their shape and their voices and their smell and the way they move. And boys can be so romantic. I can put them into my myth and fall in love with them.
Christopher Isherwood
Presidents Trump's USA is not a good country to be a sickly person in.
Steven Magee
If individuals have no virtues their vices may be of use to us.
Junius
They found a coin and helped him to the telescope. He complained and insulted them, but they helped him look at each individual letter in turn. The first letter was a 'w,' the second an 'e.' Then there was a gap. An 'a' followed, then a 'p,' an 'o,' and an 'l.'Marvin paused for a rest.After a few moments they resumed and let him see the 'o,' the 'g,' the 'i,' the 'z,' and the 'e.'The next two words were 'for' and 'the.' The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before the could tackle it.It started with 'i,' then 'n,' then 'c.' Next came an 'o' and an 'n,' followed by a 'v,' an 'e,' another 'n,' and an 'i.'After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch.He read the 'e,' the 'n,' the 'c,' and at last the final 'e,' and staggered back into their arms.'I think,' he murmured at last from deep within his corroding, rattling thorax, 'I feel good about it.'The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.
Douglas Adams
A slow but steady transformation of deviance has taken place in American society. It has not been a change in behavior as such, but in how behavior is defined. Deviant behaviors that were once defined as immoral, sinful, or criminal have been given medical meanings. Some say that rehabilitation has replaced punishment, but in many cases medical treatments have become a new form of punishment and social control.
Peter Conrad
I'm sorry that I can't be like you.I guess that it's time that you accepted that and then we can both get on with life.
Anthony T.Hincks
What a blessing to be able to leave the cares of life for a brief period and spend time in the outstretched arms of your Shepherd, rubbing, as it were, your cheek against His face in intimate fellowship through prayer.
Elizabeth George
The heart is not only the location of the 4th chakra, located at the centre of your chakra system, but also the centre of your conscious universe and is able to create and define life in its true essence.
Steven Redhead
No practice exists in isolation.
Idries Shah
You used words, discarding them meaninglessly, without thinking, whereas I thought they held meaning. I found what you will never see: that my love resides on the other side of words. - Broken Places
Rachel Thompson
The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do.
Edward Verrall Lucas
You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did not appear too much that kind of person to others. Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.
Barbara Pym
War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.
Philippa Gregory
I regard the USA mass population routinely flip-flopping between the Republican and Democratic parties as a form of insanity.
Steven Magee
We are full of rhythms . . . our pulse our gestures our digestive tracts the lunar and seasonal cycles.
Yehudi Menuhin
Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild.
James Allen
All good art is political. Between the lines of every book, the author implants messages for the unsuspecting reader. If not, what point does it serve?
Chloe Thurlow
For all the excitement and adventure and really wild things going on, the danger was always very real. Ferdy was real. He really died. There's a cost, when you wish for things there's always a cost. You have to make sure it's a price you're willing to pay. And life is the highest price of all.
Justin Richards
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
Rose Tremain
The addition of certain chemicals to the atmosphere will destroy wavelengths of light and it may only be a matter of time before one of these wavelengths of light that is critical for human survival is eliminated. This is called: The Extinction Wavelength
Steven Magee
He shrugged. 'I know you're the type''Type?''The type that doesn't let things go
Tim Weaver
I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under ones own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such.
Jane Austen
The faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in the world." "They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You must remember the sort of life they lead. They get their notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their heads before they can show them on their faces.
Thomas Hughes
Science is most definitely not a priesthood where people stand on a mountain and pass truths down to the waiting minions below.
Brian Cox
Well, I've got an idea," said Rabbit, "and here it is. We take Tigger for a long explore, somewhere where he's never been, and we lose him there, and next morning we find him again, and--mark my words--he'll be a different Tigger altogether." "Why?" said Pooh. "Because he'll be a Humble Tigger. Because he'll be a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger. That's why." "Will he be glad to see me and Piglet, too?" "Of course." "That's good," said Pooh. "I should hate him to go on being Sad," said Piglet doubtfully. "Tiggers never go on being Sad," explained Rabbit.
A.A. Milne
No one has direct access to your mind like you do. That's why introspection remains a valid technique even after the invention of brain scanners.
Christian Jarrett
There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time.
C.S. Lewis
It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step in the unknown, as for children, the days are long with gathering of experience . . .
George Gissing
She [Cressida] knows it is men's sexual desire that makes women "angels" before they have been able to possess them; once possessed, women are "things" [Troilus and Cressida I.2, 225-28, 233-34].
Tina Packer
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen
All these people moving through life, all around me, and no one, not a single person, knows what I'm going through.
Lee Thompson
We are not alone!Everything has been orchestrated.If you think that the meteor that killed of the dinosaurs was natural. Think again!What use would a world of greed be if we had to worry about getting eaten by dinosaurs every minute of the day?It wouldn't be good for the economy, now would it?Think about it!
Anthony T.Hincks
He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.
Graham Greene
He thought he’d lived through everything. Only now did he realise he’d merely existed.
Dianna Hardy
Redemption is for the weak. The strong keep sinning
Marvin Amazon
Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.
Sally Brampton
SCORPIUS: The world changes and we change with it. I am better off in this world. But the world is not better. And I don't want that.
Jack Thorne
I got both hands on her throat and there was nothing inside me but the black madness of that desire to kill her, to close my hands until she turned purple and lay still and there’d be an end to her forever. Let them send me to the chair. Let ’em burn me. All they could do was kill me.
Charles Williams
His only mistake, naturally enough, was to keep his attention on the bloke with the saw. He should have been watching the naked girls. Amazing how finely balanced that choice can be.
Mark Huntley-James
I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.
Alan Garner
I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.
Bill Bryson
Mr. Frimpong is the oldest person from church. That's when I knew why he sings louder than anybody else: it's because he's been waiting the longest for God to answer. He thinks God has forgotten him. I only knew it then. Then I loved him but it was too late to go back.
Stephen Kelman
The leading research in the adverse human health effects of electromagnetic radiation is not being done by well funded governments or corporations, it is coming from a few self funded independent researchers.
Steven Magee
We think of 1789 as the date of the French Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille as its defining event. Yet as late as halfway through 1792, most of the familiar images of the revolution had yet to occur. Louis XVI was still king, and the Assembly was negotiating a new constitutional arrangement for the monarchy, not so different from Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Mike Jay
Iyther you dont know nothing or you know too much it dont seam like theres any thing in be twean.
Russell Hoban
Anyway, I heard you and your Mother-in-Law kicked ass! Shame his daddy'o wasn't around for the family reunion, although I doubted a battle is the right way to say 'hi,my name's Kiera and I am sexing up your son's man stick.
Stephanie Hudson