Quotes by British Authors - Page 155

You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.
A.A. Gill
Half the time he seems autistic, the rest of the time he's like a lizard jacked full of lithium and speed. These things do not promote love in most of us.
Warren Ellis
Take my will and make it Thine It shall be no longer mine Take my heart it is Thine own It shall be Thy royal throne.
Frances Ridley Havergal
I'm not sure if you've noticed this yet, but Jenny Sullivan likes to overuse people's first names. It's a technique she read about in a book called Own It - Take Life By The Bollocks. She once said my name so many times I disconnected from it entirely.
Claire Garber
After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.
Michael Cox
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene
Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat.
Field Marshall Lord Wavell
I get by with a little help from my friends.
John Lennon
If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.
Douglas Adams
However, what I do believe to genuinely sacred - and, indeed, more useful to the earth as a whole - is trying to ensure that there are as few unbalanced, destructive people as possible. By whatever rationale you use, ending a pregnancy 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world. It's those unhappy, unwanted children, who then grew into angry adults, who have caused the great majority of humankind's miseries. They are the ones who make states feel feral; streets dangerous; relationships violent.
Caitlin Moran
The immense success of our life, is I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it.
Virginia Woolf
The successful development of science requires a proper balance to be maintained between the method of building up from observations and the method of deducing by pure reasoning from speculative assumptions.
Paul A.M. Dirac
Readers who have owned animals will appreciate how difficult it would be to train a dog to play exclusively in his own yard, to fetch his sweater whenever he sees it is raining outside, or to be generous in sharing his dog biscuits with other dogs. Yet these same people would not even question the feasibility of trying to use reward and punishment to teach their children the same behaviors.
Thomas Gordon
We are very fond of books. You can learn nearly everything from them that rabbits can't teach you.
Alan Snow
Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take ... You don't want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person.""That's true. That's the truest thing you ever said.""All right. I can respect that. Only you've got to play the game. Don't force an emotional situation and then blame me for it.""But I don't want any situation. I want to be left in peace.
Dorothy L. Sayers
A good cricketer never loses his nerve.He just bats on!
Anthony T.Hincks
It's all right, Ginny. It's over. It's just a memory.
J.K. Rowling
To think you cannot fight fate is only an act of surrender.
John Duigan
It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us," said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.
Neil Gaiman
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
Ernest Dowson
Without road maps fate just takes over to create random events.
Steven Redhead
Courage is fire and bullying is smoke.
Benjamin Disraeli
Manchee comes outta the bushes and sits down next to me cuz I’ve stopped right there in the middle of a trail. He looks around to see what I might be seeing and then he says, ”Good poo, Todd.” ”I’m sure it was, Manch
Patrick Ness
To see more than a reflection requires us to filter what we see, to view the world with honest eyes.
Fennel Hudson
The mighty question arises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is not what we think we are and ought to be.
D.H. Lawrence
I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should
Terry Pratchett
I think life is a lot different for alternative kids nowadays. Texting and the internet mean that being a Goth or something means you're part of a big social scene, it's an inclusive thing. Back then, we all just went our different ways in the afterglow,wishing each other all the best with the next ten years of bullying.
Frankie Boyle
The thing is, after having your first baby - there is no 'normal'. The reason form this is that there is actually no time for normality. Feeding, changing, washing muslins and generally cooing over your baby takes 25 hours a day and there is little room for anything else. Plus, you also need time to nap if you are going to recover well from your pregnancy and birth. So if you are pressurising yourself on top of that to make plans or worry about underarm depilation, you are pushing yourself far too much. Keep everything calm so you stay calm. Listen to your body. Trust yourself to know how much is 'too much'.
Dr Ellie Cannon
I felt as if I was the only person awake in a city of sleepwalkers. That's an illusion, of course. When you walk through a crowd of strangers it's next door to impossible not to imagine that they're all waxworks, but probably they're thinking just the same about you.
George Orwell
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
Douglas Adams
The cold is waiting to ooze through the soles of your shoes. Maggot-damp, this city is festering: home to hollow faces of grey flesh. They stare from windows unclean, into the sun never reaches: dismal lives lived in dismal constriction.
Emmanuelle de Maupassant
And - just as with winning the lottery, or becoming famous - there is no manual for becoming a woman, even though the stakes are so high. God knows, when I was 13, I tried to find one. You can read about other people's experience on the matter - by way of trying to crib, in advance, for an exam - but I found that this is, in itself, problematic. For throughout history, you can read stories of women who - against all odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed. Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or - most crucially of all, for a teenage girl - simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right - right, down into their clever, brilliant bones - but lonely.
Caitlin Moran
It matters not how long we live but how.
Francis Bailey
Control yourself, it is not worth it. You will regret your rudeness afterwards, your sensitive nature will be troubled
Leila Aboulela
These last months, I have learned that the acknowledged history that belongs to the daylight, that is not the only history. Turn over the stone and you will find another history, wriggling to escape.
Beth Underdown
The physique of a Messiah. But too clever to believe in God or be convinced of his own mission. And too sensitive, even if he were convinced, to carry it out. His muscles would like to act and his feelings would like to believe; but his nerve-endings and his cleverness won't allow it.
Aldous Huxley
If in doubt, cheese has been always the answer..
Lindsey Kelk
A black hole holds all the colors of the universe.
Anthony T.Hincks
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The indie kids, huh? You've got them at your school, too. That group with the cool-geek haircuts and the charity shop clothes and names from the fifties. Nice enough, never mean, but always the ones who end up being the Chosen One when the vampires come calling or when the alien queen needs the Source of All Light or something. They're too cool to ever, ever do anything like go to prom or listen to music other than jazz while reading poetry. They've always got some story going on that they're heroes of. The rest of us just have to live here, hovering around the edges, left out of it all, for the most part.
Patrick Ness
Then none was for a party;Then all were for the state;Then the great man helped the poor,And the poor man loved the great;Then lands were fairly proportioned;Then spoils were fairly sold;The Romans were like brothersIn the brave days of old.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
I am not Iron-Man, I am Forest-Man!
Steven Magee
Open your eyes, Ambrosio, and be prudent. Hell is your lot; You are doomed to eternal perdition; Nought lies beyond your grave but a gulph of devouring flames.
Matthew Lewis
However, for all his affection and loyalty towards the animal, the dog would soon be leaving him - they would both be present at a celebratory dinner when they reached the roof, he reflected with a touch of gallows-humour, but the poodle would be in the pot.
J.G. Ballard
Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.
Idries Shah
A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.
George Eliot
He cross-examined his very wine when he had nothing else at hand.
Charles Dickens
As we delight in the strange and exotic beauty of orchid flowers, it is salutary to reflect that we are, in essence, looking at their genitalia.
Unknown British Biologist
Though the world was hazy, all I could think about was love. And how I'd never had it. How I would never understand what it felt like to fall asleep knowing another person was thinking of you. I would never have someone touch the small of my back as they steered me through a crowd. I would never know the contour of someone's face off-by-heart, and yet not be bored with it. And, as I sank to the grey, chewing-gum stained carpet, all I could think was how sad that was.
Holly Bourne
The prophet is always at the mercy of events; nevertheless, I venture to conclude this book with the forecast that at least half the illnesses of mankindwill disappear once our food supplies are raised from fertile soil and consumed in a fresh condition.
Albert Howard
[I]n any profession the highest order of work is achieved, not by fussy empirical demands for 'something to be done,' but by patient study of the eternal laws.
Henry Whitehead
I'll pray for you.""That's very kind of you.""I can't spare you a whole rosary, you know. Just a decade. I've got such a long list of people. I take them in order and they get a decade about once a week.
Evelyn Waugh
Waiting and hoping is a hard thing to do when you've already been waiting and hoping for almost as long as you can bear it.
Jenny Nimmo
He said it twice because he had never said it before, and it sounded funny.
A.A. Milne
People change. Sometimes I think they don't know they're changing until it's already happened, though. You get so used to being one person, it's weird when you wake up and everything is different.
Lindsey Kelk
For excellent health and a good skin color, I recommend that people sit next to a shady ultraviolet transmitting window when indoors.
Steven Magee
While 'Rap Trax!' recorded, Neel found some scrap paper and we started writing our first lyrics. Bandying about subject matter and title, we got stuck on the idea of 'cool', so my first rap song became 'Pretty Cool'. It was a symbol of our confidence. We weren't awesome cool or mega cool. We were only... pretty cool.
Nikesh Shukla
Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes," or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox. 'I am an amateur,' said Lord Peter
Dorothy L. Sayers
The mistake that many policymakers make is to believe that in education the best way to face the future is by improving what they did in the past. There are three major processes in education: the curriculum, which is what the school system expects students to learn; pedagogy, the process by which the system helps students to do it; and assessment, the process of judging how well they are doing.
Ken Robinson
I never stopped joking around long enough to realize you weren't laughing anymore.
Alexandra Potter