Quotes by British Authors - Page 16

You can't live in dread of something for long without beginning to crave it.
Glen Duncan
There are no free passes in life, outcomes will always mirror the input.
Steven Redhead
E: When one has at last reached freedom, can one even contemplate going back?HC: But if it is not possible to go back, or to choose to go back, then it is not freedom!~Ericsson; Hilary Craven
Agatha Christie
We all suffer from dreams.
Bernard Cornwell
Literature is the question without the answer. Philosophy is the answer without the question.
Chloe Thurlow
Words to intrigue, inspire, examine, question, praise; Words to help us appreciate our world, our selves, our games; Words to dance our true soul fires gracefully free.
Jay Woodman
It is through experience that I have lost faith in USA law enforcement.
Steven Magee
Sometimes just getting through each day requires almost superhuman strength.
Jojo Moyes
Hermione was screaming again: the sound went through Harry like physical pain.
J.K. Rowling
Tolerance is the essential starting point for compassion. That’s why it is so emphasized in our society right now. In a world full of discrimination, prejudice, and marginalization, people need to be taught to tolerate people who are different. Tolerance, at the political, social, and cultural level, will prevent us from choosing speech or actions that harms other people groups, which is a definite win.
Stephen Lovegrove
Life is not always what one wants it to be but to make the best of it as it is is the only way of being happy.
Jennie Jerome Churchill
When she had first crossed the dry and dusty world which his mind inhabited she had been like a spring shower; in opening himself to it he had not been mistaken. He had gone wrong only in assuming that marriage, by itself, gave him either power or title to appropriate that freshness. As he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.
C.S. Lewis
Lucy buried her head in his mane to hide from his face. But there must have been magic in his mane. She could feel lion-strength going into her. Quite suddenly she sat up. "I'm sorry, Aslan," she said. "I'm ready now.""Now you are a lioness," said Aslan. "And now all Narnia will be renewed. But come. We have no time to lose.
C.S. Lewis
She could have happily lived inside any nineteenth century novel.
Kate Atkinson
Who knows why we do it? And when we've done it, nobody wants it. Still we keep doing it. That's what makes a writer a writer.
Chloe Thurlow
He watched the newly arrived commuters as they stepped into the carriage, pushed their way down the tube, the odours from their damp clothes mingling, giving off varying degrees of mustiness: London grime, or smoke from airless offices. A woman wearing a blue swing coat glanced along the carriage, casting around for an empty seat. Her pale skin, the searching green eyes, reminded him of Emma. Briefly, he felt his breath catch; he stood, clambered back over his neighbour and indicated for her to take his seat. And so his mind stayed with Emma when he knew he should be working out a strategy for telling Dorothy of his news. But Emma was never far away; like the glitter balls in dance halls, she would slowly rotate in his memory, different facets reappearing, as the hues changed in her auburn hair.
Amanda Sington-Williams
No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
T.S Eliot
John Smith: Mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour. Let's hope that from now on this country can find its heroes in smaller places. In the most ordinary of deeds.
Paul Cornell
It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up again.
Patrick Ness
Hagrid!" Harry called, holding on to the bike for dear life. "Hagrid—Accio Hagrid!
J.K. Rowling
Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.
Arthur C. Clarke
But he didn't have to listen to his father. Taking after your father was optional, wasn't it?
Howard Jacobson
Nothing more likely,"said Hannasyde. "I've got to try and rattle him.""It's him that'll do the rattling,"said the Sergeant darkly. "he's the nearest thing to a snake I've seen outside of the Zoo.
Georgette Heyer
But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.
George Eliot
I know I am awful. But how much more awful I should be without the Faith.
Evelyn Waugh
If you have no troubles – buy a goat.
Idries Shah
The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.
Rosamunde Pilcher
Patience's design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that?
David Mitchell
Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.
Arthur Conan Doyle
We live as One Man for contracting our infinite senses we behold multitude or expanding: we behold as one.
William Blake
What they prefer to that is to find someone to have power over; someone to own and to bully, to smash and to waste. She wondered if she would ever be in love.
Gwendoline Riley
You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.'Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.
Graham Greene
Maybe it's because I was an only child, but I've always wanted kids.
Benedict Cumberbatch
we are the living links in a life force that moves and plays around and through us, binding the deepest soils with the farthest stars.
Alan Chadwick
The world is all change, my friend. We all would like to go back, but the past is done. We must look forwards. We must change ourselves, however painful it may be, or be left behind.
Joe Abercrombie
Heaven, envious of our joys, is waxen pale; And when we whisper, then the stars fall down To be partakers of our honey talk.(Dido, Queen of Carthage 4.4.52-54)
Christopher Marlowe
High creativity is responding to situations without critical thought.' - John Cleese
Paul Arden
…once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…
Arthur C. Clarke
To imagine that I was pleased would have been an understatement, if I was a dog, my tail would be wagging my arse off.
Gary Edward Gedall
We are medium-sized mammals who only prosper because we've developed a half-arsed ability to terraform the less suitable bits of the planet we evolved on, and we're conscious of our inevitable decay and death, and we can't live anywhere else. There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die.
Charles Stross
In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA's MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then-CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, containing 1738 documents, over 17,000 pages. This archive was declassified through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals are redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by "MORI", for "Managament of Officially Released Information", the CIA's automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents, to be referenced throughout this chapter, are accessible on the Internet (see: abuse-of-power (dot) org/modules/content/index.php?id=31). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research into behavioral modification" (1977).
Orit Badouk Epstein
Sam, there comes a time when the world no longer needs heroes. And then the true hero knows to walk away.
Michael Grant
People are wrong when they say things like, “I didn’t have time to think.” If you’re really worried, or really miserable, those feelings come welling up around the edges of the other things you’re doing, so that you are in the feelings even when you’re working hard at something else.
Diana Wynne Jones
Obedience is a foundational stepping-stone on the path of God’s will.
Elizabeth George
I have learned to be kinder to myself, to imagine that I am my own best friend, whispering comforting words in my ear and drowning out the voices of Self-Doubt and Self-Criticism. I have learned to acknowledge and appreciate the 98% that I have achieved instead of the 2% that I didn’t.
Roz Savage
There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat.
Jeanette Winterson
This thing all things devours:Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;Gnaws iron, bites steel;Grinds hard stones to meal;Slays king, ruins town,And beats high mountain down.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Exceptional talent does not always win its reward unless favoured by exceptional circumstances.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made 'realizations' the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by 'maistry'.
C.S. Lewis
Some people make the mistake of confusing "submission" with "weakness", whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.I accepted the fact that there are things beyond my limits. I can only see some parts, like floating fragments from a movie, but the bigger scheme is beyond my comprehension.
Elif Shafak
Before a Cat will condescendTo treat you as a trusted friend,Some little token of esteemIs needed, like a dish of cream;And you might now and then supplySome caviare, or Strassburg Pie,Some potted grouse, or salmon paste —He's sure to have his personal taste.(I know a Cat, who makes a habitOf eating nothing else but rabbit,And when he's finished, licks his pawsSo's not to waste the onion sauce.)A Cat's entitled to expectThese evidences of respect.And so in time you reach your aim,And finally call him by his name.
T.S Eliot
Bessie was News, Leaders, and Gossip; Enid was Features, Make-up and general Sub. Whenever they were at a loss for copy they would mercilessly pillage ancient copies of Punch or Home Chat. An occasional hole in the copy was filled with a ghoulish smudge - local block-making had clearly indicated that somewhere a poker-work fanatic had gone quietly out of his mind. In this way the Central Balkan Herald was made up every morning and then delivered to the composition room where the chain-gang quickly reduced it to gibberish. MINISTER FINED FOR KISSING IN PUBIC. WEDDING BULLS RING OUT FOR PRINCESS. QUEEN OF HOLLAND GIVES PANTY FOR EX-SERVICE MEN. MORE DOGS HAVE BABIES THIS SUMMER IN BELGRADE. BRITAINS NEW FLYING-GOAT.
Lawrence Durrell
All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions andmodes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established andcontrolled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one amongmany competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence.
John Stuart Mill
SUMMER DEEP""Summer deep is in the hills again His lady is a lioness Winds of birds blow through the fields again Invaders from the true worlds A coat of grapes is on my back again I ride upon my zebra Pterodactyl beak hat on my brow The truth is like a stranger Be like you could All my friends say.
Marc Bolan
It’s only through the degradation of the soul that you can know who you really are; when all else is stripped away, leaving you bare.” Somehow, his black eyes darkened, the venom in his words more deadly than a viper’s bite. “Let me degrade you, Katherine.
Dianna Hardy
The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -I hold him in the casket of my widow’s headas he held me upon that next bes
Carol Ann Duffy
The future though imminent is obscure.
Winston Churchill
Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
Terry Pratchett
Rooms are never alone," said the Doctor with a laugh. "Only the people who live them can be alone.
Charles Lambert
Happiness is something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.
Aldous Huxley