Quotes by British Authors - Page 159

Act like a champion, and then become one.
Steve Backley
I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.
Joseph Conrad
It is not given to each of usTo be desired.
Mina Loy
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.
Idries Shah
That small difference made all the difference.
Johnny Rich
Places are people as well as rocks, trees and buildings. Places are moments in time.
A.J. Dalton
Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)
Christopher Nolan
Sometimes he missed the numbed, walking-underwater feeling feel that the cocktail of narcotics used to give him. But if a situation went down in here, he was going to need all of his wits to get out of it.
R.D. Ronald
Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. When we are unable to return the favor, we can pay it forward to someone or something else. Using this approach, we can see ourselves as part of a larger flow of giving and receiving throughout time. Receiving from the past, we can give to the future. When tackling issues such as climate change, the stance of gratitude is a refreshing alternative to guilt or fear as a source of motivation.
Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
Believe," said the rumbling voice. "If you are to survive, you must believe.""Believe what?" asked Shadow. "What should I believe?"He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, and his eyes filled with fire. He opened his spit-flecked buffalo mouth and it was red inside with the flames that burned inside him, under the earth."Everything," roared the buffalo man.
Neil Gaiman
Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you,and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervaluethe warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachmentand constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capableof everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equalto every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance,so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you havean object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one;you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existenceor when hope is gone.
Jane Austen
Snape was a bully who loved the goodness he sensed in Lily without being able to emulate her. That was his tragedy.
J.K. Rowling
Child, if such folks awe you, then picture them on the lavatory, straining, constipated. They will at once seem small, pathetic, manageable." And she whispered to me a great, universal truth: "THE BOWELS ARE GREAT LEVELLERS.
Angela Carter
If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!
Idries Shah
June suns, you cannot store themTo warm the winter's cold,The lad that hopes for heavenShall fill his mouth with mould.
A.E. Housman
He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.
Charles Churchill
But also . . . I have plenty of people around me to talk to, and no one to be honest with.
Helen Oyeyemi
Words save our lives, sometimes.
Neil Gaiman
Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.
Anthony Burgess
A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,Lingering onward dreamilyIn an evening of July —Children three that nestle near,Eager eye and willing ear,Pleased a simple tale to hear —Long has paled that sunny sky:Echoes fade and memories die:Autumn frosts have slain July.Still she haunts me, phantomwise,Alice moving under skiesNever seen by waking eyes.Children yet, the tale to hear,Eager eye and willing ear,Lovingly shall nestle near.In a Wonderland they lie,Dreaming as the days go by,Dreaming as the summers die:Ever drifting down the stream —Lingering in the golden gleam —Life, what is it but a dream?
Lewis Carroll
These hormones do not make me feel feminine: every night, I lie in bed feeling wrenched, and the bulge of my sanitary napkin in my kickers looks like a cock.
Caitlin Moran
We are each given a life to show what we can achieve during our time here on Earth.And we are each given a heart to show how we can be compassionate and kind during our time here on Earth.We shouldn't waste either.
Anthony T.Hincks
Youth can not know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
J.K. Rowling
But I'm a bad priest, you see. I know--from experience--how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh, no, they were just as quick and light and . . .
Graham Greene
Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means.
Idries Shah
What am I to y
Dianna Hardy
Where have they gone?" "Wherever magicians used to go. Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain.
Susanna Clarke
The speaker calls for a careful examination of Christ's principle of turning the other cheek before we use it as a demand or excuse for total personal pacifism. After all, when literally struck on the cheek, Jesus did question the legitimacy of the authority by which this was done.
John Thackway
Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed there must be evil.
George Gordon Byron
Addiction to reading... There are worse things in the world to be Addicted to. I admire your hobby choice it's mine as well.
Christy A. Mair
Even if it's being a Beatle for the rest of my life, it's still only a temporary thing.
George Harrison
There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" Fred, A Christmas Carol.
Charles Dickens
Depth of understanding involves something which is more than merely a matter of deconstructive alertness it involves a measure of interpretative charity and at least the beginnings of a wide responsiveness.
Stefan Collini
I wonder if he'll ever see the truth in my own heart: that, whatever Dustpelt says, however much Fireheart breaks the warrior code, I love him more that I could imagine loving any other cat. And if Fireheart knew, would he love me, too?- Sandstorm
Erin Hunter
Michael: There's nothing here to fear.Lucifer: Well, there's always the truth.
Mike Carey
If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions: he may dream of training even such a person as myself, even poor Parkis, into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it.
Graham Greene
I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.
Terry Pratchett
You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth.
Mike Carey
I think what has this day brought me and what have I given it?
Henry Moore
Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
Tahir Shah
Jo's whimper rose slightly but the scream she yearned for wouldn't materialise. Instead, as she looked at her hand, she began to make a gurgling, gagging noise, more animal than human.
Martin Pond
Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
George Meredith
And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.
Anthony Burgess
The book of nature has no beginning, as it has no end. Open this book where you will, and at any period of your life, and if you have the desire to acquire knowledge you will find it of intense interest, and no matter how long or how intently you study the pages, your interest will not flag, for in nature there is no finality.
Jim Corbett
Sometimes in order to be happy in the present moment you have to be willing to give up all hope for a better past.
Robert Holden
One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.
H.G.Wells
THE TRUTH OF THE VERY SMALLWhen he is born, a baby's head is filled with the knowledge of space. The circumference of his skull is as infinite as the twirlings of the universe. His eyes look out with the blur of eyes which see for all species. He has remembered his own nature from past patterns. Now his heart beats through rock, sky, oceans. He feels the silence and the sound all around the world beneath his skin.We all hold somewhere deep within us the truth we accepted in innocence. The seas, the forests, the soil, the atmosphere, are all vital parts of an ongoing system. By harming any part of it we must ultimately harm ourselves. It is that simple.
Jay Woodman
Modernism isn't a design ethos any more, it's an economy of scale, and a marketing tool to sell the ordinary as something special, the sexless as erotic. A technological device without a specific, personalized identity has a subtext: it asserts the value of instrumentality. Its design is a reflection of its role... The anonymity of these objects is part of what they are: interchangeable commodities whose uniqueness in so far as they possess any is created by what is done with them. Function is an identity. And that identity is something we are encouraged to incorporate into our perception of self, that anonymity is proposed as something to emulate. Whimsy and uniqueness are indulgences.
Nick Harkaway
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
J.G. Ballard
There are many who say ‘I believe this,’ but would they hold true to those beliefs if their children were threatened? No. But Genghis would. If you told him you would kill his children, he would tell you to go ahead, but realize that the cost would be infinite, that he would tear down cities and nations and the price would never be paid. He did not lie and his enemies knew it. His word was iron.
Conn Iggulden
You shouldn't be wasting your time worrying about what's going to happen after you die. It's pointless. Think about what's happening now. In your life. That's what's important. So change the subject, will you?
Clare Furniss
And she gave him a melting smile, the glutinous sweetness of which he devoured with the avidity of a diabetic who swallows a fatal spoonful of jam.
John Collier
Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate.
Arnold Bennett
Against the rules. She's on it, like a hound on a fox.'Her name is Annie.
Ali Land
But thought has no eyelids to close or ears to block...
David Mitchell
1887A lifetime isn't enough to know how a person will behave.
Jessie Burton
Your image has receded till it is like the thinnest shadow of the old moon... a thin silver edge appeared, and now you hang like a sickle over my life.
Virginia Woolf
It's the essence of a degenerating mind periodically, to lose all sense of continuous self, and therefore any regard for what others think of your lack of continuity.
Ian McEwan
It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.
Dodie Smith
There's a value in that space - rent, overhead, staffing costs, etc. - that has to be paid back by a certain number of inventory turns per month. In other words, the onesies and twosies waste space. However, when that space doesn't cost anything, suddenly you can look at those infrequent sellers again, and they begin to have value. This was the insight that led to Amazon, Netflix, and all the other companies I was talking to.
Chris Anderson