Quotes by British Authors - Page 161

More faults are created than cured by professional teachers.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
We have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people's stories - that's how it goes, does it not?
Susan Fletcher
She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.
Jane Austen
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.
Thomas Henry Huxley
He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent... by exploiting his vanity. He can... enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a "deeper," "spiritual" world within him which they can not understand. You see the idea - the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of same, a continual under-current of self-satisfaction... and that to cease to do so would be "priggish," "intolerant," and... "Puritanical.
C.S. Lewis
The opposite of having faith is having self-pity.
Og Guinness
As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.
John Lennon
Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.
Jane Austen
Be a dog, but don't be a younger brother.Proverb.
Idries Shah
Pursuing dreams can be daunting. It feels like you're standing on the edge of a cliff staring at your dream as it sits on a cloud, floating out in the open air, and all you need to do is take that leap to see if you'll fall or if you'll fly.
Carrie Hope Fletcher
Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.
A.S. Byatt
Introspection and observation of others are vital for the ongoing good health of our own psyche; watch, learn and tweak as required.
Sam Owen
But my lazy lack of faith, my in-vogue atheism, has taken away the safety net hanging beneath our children's lives.
Rosamund Lupton
Git'er DoneThey beat their swords upon their shieldsTo no beast or man would they yield
Muse
God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it.
Maria McCann
The difference between having a job and having a vocation is that a job is some unpleasant work you do in order to make money, with the sole purpose of making money. There are plenty of jobs because there is still a certain amount of dirty work that nobody wants to do, and that therefore they will pay someone to do it. There is essentially less and less of that kind of work because of mechanisation. If you do a job with the sole purpose of making money, you are absurd, because if money becomes the goal–and it does if you work that way–you begin increasingly to confuse it with happiness or with pleasure. Yes, one can take a handful of crisp one dollar bills and practically water your mouth over it, but this is a kind of person who is confused like a Pavlov dog, who salivates on the wrong bell.
Alan W. Watts
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
J.R.R. Tolkien
Gandalf: Often does hatred hurt itself!
J.R.R. Tolkien
Of all the many people we meet in a lifetime,it is strange that so many of us find ourselves in thrall to one particular person. Once that face is seen,an involuntary heartache sets in for which there is no cure. All the wonder of this world finds shape in that one person and thereafter there is no reprieve, because this kind of love does not end,or not until death.
Rosie Alison
Hello, Harry!” she said.“Er — my name’s Barny,” said Harry, flummoxed.“Oh, have you changed that too?” she asked brightly.“How did you know — ?”“Oh, just your expression,” she said.Like her father, Luna was wearing bright yellow robes, which she had accessorized with a large sunflower in her hair. Once you got over the brightness of it all, the general effect was quite pleasant. At least there were no radishes dangling from her ears.
J.K. Rowling
If you remain calm in the midst of great chaos, it is the surest guarantee that it will eventually subside.
Julie Andrews Edwards
Don't be stupid, it's a flying house!
J.K. Rowling
It was so easy to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally witnessed.("The Wendigo")
Algernon Blackwood
I began to enjoy myself: being apoplectic's quite invigorating.
Jonathan Gash
It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.
Emma Forrest
I am aware I sound like a Marxist Victor Meldrew but, guess what, I'm over 50 and I don't give a fuck.
Mark Thomas
Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything.” Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.
Idries Shah
Old friends are the great blessing of one's later years. ... They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking.
Horace Walpole
Men's tongues in some things outrun women's.
Winston Graham
Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus "low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit."] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items. -- From The Devil's DP Dictionary
Stan Kelly Bootle
Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.
Douglas Adams
It seemed to him that the little Manchu had never looked so radiant. She gave him a most charming smile, but her eyes were all for the boy.
James Hilton
I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed--there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases.
David Byrne
... Good gracious, Jerry, you'll probably have to marry the girl.'Joanna was half serious, half laughing.It was at that moment that I made a very important discovery.'Damn it all,' I said. 'I don't mind if I do. In fact - I should like it.'A very funny expression came over Joanna's face. She got up and said dryly, as she went toward the door, 'Yes, I've known that for some time...'She left me standing, glass in hand, aghast at my new discovery.
Agatha Christie
God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.
James M. Barrie
Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more then I am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being.
Emily Brontë
I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to ourselves; and furthermore that what we are is only part of us, because identity, unlike "identity", must include what we do. And I think that to find oneself and every aspect of this complexity reduced in the public mind to one property that apparently subsumes all the rest ("gay", "black", "Muslim", whatever) is to be the victim of a piece of extraordinary intellectual vulgarity.
Philip Pullman
I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.)
Gail Honeyman
In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.
Charles Dickens
Positive results will come when you start to replace your negative thoughts and habits with positive ones.
Robert Tew
I know about sureness,' said Didactylos. 'I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?''It has to be done,' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and-''Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of philosopher,' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.''The state of the body is not-''Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wan't them in the pit that they were throwing just as hard as they could.
Terry Pratchett
Men and boys are constantly portrayed as predatory, sexist, their sense of humour is vilified and their behaviour is regarded as unacceptable. Factor in the constant diet we are fed of men as perpetrators of rape, murder and domestic violence. Boys must wonder whether they will ever be able to do anything right. This must make it painfully difficult for young men and women to build up relations based on honesty, love and trust.
Belinda Brown
Given the chance, i'll die like a baby, on some faraway beach, when the season's over.
Brian Eno
There is a kind of truth in everything, even fairytales. In fact, especially in fairytales... The King understood it as he looked out from the roof of the Temple and saw the clouds flying past and the green fields far beneath him. He knew that some things are real whether you believe in them or not...(The Thirteenth King)
Elizabeth Hopkinson
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
George Gordon Byron
They hammered on the outer gate and called, but there was at first no answer; and then to their surprise someone blew a horn, and the lights in the windows went out. A voice shouted in the dark: 'Who's that? Be off! You can't come in. Can't you read the notice: No admittance between sundown and sunrise?' 'Of course we can't read the notice in the dark,' Sam shouted back. 'And if hobbits of the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I'll tear down your notice when I find it.
J.R.R. Tolkien
If little labour, little are our gains:Man's fortunes are according to his pains.
Robert Herrick
Journalism can be lethal
Robert Fisk
It became evident, that in Paris, only one man could fulfil Heloise’s educational needs, Peter (or as the French called him, Pierre) Abelard, a thirty-seven year old philosopher and teacher
Emily Williams
Life is one long struggle to disinter oneself to keep one's head above the accumulations the ever deepening layers of objects ... which attempt to cover one over steadily almost irresistibly like falling snow.
Rose Macaulay
The Christian should work as if all depended upon him, and pray as if it all depended upon God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Don’t ever leave us again. Vaughn has been horrible. Like pre-Grace horrible.
Sarra Manning
There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.
Fred Hoyle
This should be fun see how much we can annoy them this time.” “Annoy is such a harsh word...” Tria teased.
Charon Lloyd-Roberts
No matter how much we might wish it, there is no way to build a lock that only angels can open and demons cannot. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics or less of an angel than they appear.
CGP Grey
Pluto is dead, I know as I observed the Terminator that was sent to kill it
Steven Magee
It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.
Joyce Cary
Corporate humans would be regarded as a cancerous growth on the Earth by nature.
Steven Magee
I consider myself fortunate that I spent three years working at 7,775 feet before spending five years working at 13,796 feet on the summit of Mauna Kea. I can only wonder how much more severe my long term very high altitude sickness could have been without the initial adaptation to the lower altitude.
Steven Magee
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow hard and cold
Thomas Hood