Quotes by British Authors - Page 170

How does one become butterfly?' Pooh asked pensively.'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,' Piglet replied.'You mean to die?' asked Pooh.'Yes and no,' he answered. 'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will live on.
A.A. Milne
Life would be simpler if only we were all unicorns.
Olley White
Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,When I have no engagements written on my block,When no one comes to disturb my inward peace,When no one comes to take me away from myselfAnd turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle,A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection,Being so contrived that it takes too long a timeTo get myself back to myself when they have gone.
Vita Sackville-West
The greatest things to have can't be possessed, they exist within yet can be shared, like freedom, love, trust, integrity, fun, dreams, creativity, wisdom, peace.
Jay Woodman
I steadied by guitar against the table, and steadied myself with it.And forgot every rule I had ever known.
Ruth Ahmed
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.
Henry James
Lucky people should hide. Pray the days of wrath do not visit their home.
Josephine Hart
Gomst's mouth framed a 'no', but every other muscle in him said 'yes'. You'd think priests would be better liars, what with their jobs and all.
Mark Lawrence
Felix has always believed that if there is one thing in life that is fated it is our birth, that far-fetched conspiracy of circumstances which have to occur in order for us to get born.
Glenn Haybittle
Tis the old wind in the old anger,But then it threshed another wood.
A.E. Housman
If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right.If they tell you that that is all a story is about, they are very definitely wrong.
Neil Gaiman
One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice.
Phil Hine
It has not been a successful life.''No -- it has only been a beautiful one.
Henry James
That dot is special. That dot is where LIFE lives. And I get it, it's biased of a living organism (like me) to think that life is important and special, but I don't care!Because stars don't care, galaxies don't care, but people do. Undoubtedly we're something special because, as far as we can tell, we are unique.
Charlie McDonnell
One of the few advantages of reaching my age is that I've seen it all. Learned not to judge anyone until I've walked in their shoes. That's why we all need friends, isn't it, to help us out with the weak spots? And sometimes the weak spots nobody can see are the ones that hurt the most.
Debbie Johnson
Life is like a boxing match, keep on throwing those punches and one of them will land.Kevin Lane - The Shawshank Prevention
Ken Scott
The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.
Henry Martyn
In the distorting mirror of your mind, an angel can seem to have a devil's face.
Idries Shah
Coloron often pondered how a race, in which the stupid seemed more inclined to breed, had managed to come this far, and why human intelligence persisted—a discussion point in the nature vs nurture debate which had not died in half a millennium.
Neal Asher
Boys say they don't mind how you get your hair done. But then they leave you for someone with really great standard girl hair and the next thing you know you're alone with a masculine crop crying into your granola.
Alexa Chung
Please please read. Everything and anything. You may not remember all of it, you may not remember any of it But from the fairytailes...to the sweeping soaring classics I hope you will one day discover for yourself, all those words--those lives and characters, ideas and ideals--will, without you realising, shape you and sometimes even shelter you. And it shall be as if you have lived a thousand lives.
Amy Mowafi
It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young king that he was sorry for his father's death;but, as common subjects have that virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it.
Charles Dickens
Come on," he said. "Bring the poker."I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it.
P.G. Wodehouse
We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest.
Rosalind Franklin
From this height the sleeping city seems like a child's construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination. The volcanic plug might be black Plasticine, the castle balanced solidly atop it a skewed rendition of crenellated building bricks. The orange street lamps are crumpled toffee-wrappers glued to lollipop sticks.
Ian Rankin
the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
Charles Dickens
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
Edward Langley
Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that — no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were.
Alan Moore
Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
E.M. Forster
There was something else,--something quite undefinable, that gave a singular glow and radiance to the whole countenance, and suggested the burning of a light through alabaster,--a creeping of some subtle fire through the veins which made the fair body seem the mere reflection of some greater fairness within.
Marie Corelli
A month in and it seemed to CY that he was an explorer summiting the foothill of an a bizarre and primitive island.
Sarah Hall
You can’t possibly be thinking of sending him home! He can barely walk.” Meg’s smile began to slip. Ambulance crews were queuing almost out the door, and all this lad needed was a stat dose of Man-the-Fuck-Up.
Cari Hunter
Be not afraid of life believe that life is worth living and your belief will create the fact.
Henry James
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Charles Dickens
Going down in history is a dead end pursuit
Benny Bellamacina
The beginning of wisdom, I believe, is our ability to accept an inherent messiness in our explanation of what's going on. Nowhere is it written that human minds should be able to give a full accounting of creation in all dimensions and on all levels. Ludwig Wittgenstein had the idea that philosophy should be what he called "true enough." I think that's a great idea. True enough is as true as can be gotten. The imagination is chaos. New forms are fetched out of it. The creative act is to let down the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended and then to attempt to bring out of it ideas.
Rupert Sheldrake
The thing with dying, well, with death really, is that there's a difference between being someone who knows they can really die at any time and someone who doesn't.
Jo Walton
... if one hasn't been through, as our people mercifully did not go through, the horrors of an occupation by a foreign power, you have no right to pronounce upon what a country does, which has been through all that.
Anthony Eden
Rather than seek to be squired and dated by their rivals why should it not be possible for women to find relaxation and pleasure in the company of their 'inferiors'? They would need to shed their desperate need to admire a man, and accept the gentler role of loving him. A learned woman cannot castrate a truck-driver like she can her intellectual rival, because he has no exaggerated respect for her bookish capacities. The alternative to conventional education is not stupidity, and many a clever girl needs the corrective of a humbler soul's genuine wisdom.
Germaine Greer
The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.
Terry Pratchett
There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.
Neil Gaiman
He nodded, looking across the room at the sea of photographers and journalists. The microphones spread around him like birds waiting to be fed.
F.C. Malby
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of manIn me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
If you want to live a godly life, then choose to put the things into your mind that lead to living a godly life.
Elizabeth George
Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror- glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids swollen and purple.On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me - my heart seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why and for whom I despaired.
Charlotte Brontë
Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it. Writing as I would define it serves to record language by means of an agreed set of symbols that enable a message to be played back like a wax cylinder recording. The reader's eye runs over the signs and tells the brain how each is pronounced and the inner message springs into life.
Irving Finkel
I am sure that if we can find reconciliation with our past – whether parents, partners or friends – we should try and do that. It won't be perfect, it will be a compromise . . . but it might mean acceptance and, the big word, forgiveness.
Jeanette Winterson
We should not value education as a means to prosperity but prosperity as a means to education. Only then will our priorities be right. For education unlike prosperity is an end in itself. .. power and influence come through the acquisition of useless knowledge. . . irrelevant subjects bring understanding of the human condition by forcing the student to stand back from it.
Roger Scruton
Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as lambs in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person is only a crying off from being held accountable, and that you have got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way, when it goes round a company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this rule. Fast and loose in one thing, Fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one.
Charles Dickens
[Fireheart] was interrupted by a screech from Cloudtail. "Fireheart! Fireheart, Brightpaw isn't dead!"Fireheart spun around and raced across the clearing to crouch beside Brightpaw. Her white-and-ginger fur, which, she had always kept so neatly groomed, was spiky with drying blood. On one side of her face the fur was torn away, and there was blood where her eye should have been. One ear had been shredded, and there were huge claw marks scored across her muzzle.
Erin Hunter
The blues are intent and watchful. “You’re trying to get me to change my mind, aren't you?”“Lilah, I constantly hope that you are going to change your mind, but I know you well enough to know that you won’t.” I just nod at him.
Anna Bloom
Some lurid things have been said about me—that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth—that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I'd only point out, though, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin.
Christopher Hitchens
…the world was a vale of tears—it always had been.
Alexander McCall Smith
I suppose there hasn’t been a single month since the war, in any trade you care to name, in which there weren’t more men than jobs. It’s brought a peculiar, ghastly feeling into life. It’s like on a sinking ship when there are nineteen survivors and fourteen lifebelts. But is there anything particularly modern in that, you say? Has it anything to do with the war? Well, it feels as if it had. The feeling that you’ve got to be everlastingly fighting and hustling, that you’ll never get anything unless you grab it from somebody else, that there’s always somebody after your job, that next month or the month after they’ll be reducing staff and it’s you that’ll get the bird – that, I swear, didn’t exist in the old life before the war.
George Orwell
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
George Orwell
If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong.
Jasper Fforde
I’d rather make a thousand mistakes trying for a better life, than to die not making any mistakes at all.
Steven Aitchison
The development of the telescope marks, indeed, a new phase in human thought, a new vision of life. It is an extraordinary thing that the Greeks, with their lively and penetrating minds, never realized the possibilities of either microscope or telescope. They made no use of the lens. Yet they lived in a world in which glass had been known and had been made beautiful for hundreds of years; they had about them glass flasks and bottles, through which they must have caught glimpses of things distorted and enlarged. But science in Greece was pursued by philosophers in an aristocratic spirit, men who, with a few such exceptions as the ingenious Archimedes and Hiero, were too proud to learn from such mere artisans as jewellers and metal- and glass-workers.Ignorance is the first penalty of pride. The philosopher had no mechanical skill and the artisan had no philosophical education, and it was left for another age, more than a thousand years later, to bring together glass and the astronomer.(The Earth in Space and Time §1)
H.G.Wells
There is no shame in not knowing your history, the shame lies in not finding out.
Habeeb Akande
It is the kind of stoicism which had been seen as characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, perhaps nowhere better expressed than in 'The Battle of Maldon' where the most famous Saxon or English cry has been rendered - 'Courage must be the firmer, heart the bolder, spirit must be the greater, as our strength grows less'. That combination of bravery and fatalism, endurance and understatement, is the defining mood of Arhurian legend.
Peter Ackroyd