Quotes by British Authors - Page 19

It's not lying when you do it to officers!
Terry Pratchett
She felt her strong young body that she had never appreciated when she had it, constantly worrying that she didn't meet standards of beauty and not understanding how standards of health were so much more important.
Jo Walton
Identity politics divides us; fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations, the other in nuances. One draws boundaries, the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water.
Elif Shafak
Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness it is a sign of emotional failure.
Bertrand Russell
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.
Idries Shah
She had to quickly pop back to the fifteenth century to find a word for how beautiful he was. The boy was makeless.
Helen Oyeyemi
Where there is no consciousness, there is no time.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
I think actually if you take the analogy with other areas of engineering, and increasingly of science and even mathematics, you can see people do not have to learn the vast number of formulae they used to learn. Instead, they have to learn to use the computer effectively. This frees them, I feel, to understand concepts and the foundations while they’re learning the mechanics of the application of the theory.
C.A.R. Hoare
No Child of YoursI saw a child hide in the cornerSo I went and asked her nameShe was so naive and so petiteWith such a tiny frame. 'No one,' she replied, that's what I am calledI have no family, no one at allI eat, I sleep, I get depressedThere is no life, I have nothing left.''Why hide in the corner?' I had to ask twiceBecause I've been hurt, it not very niceI tried to stop it, it was out of my controlI feared for myself I wanted to go. I begged for my sorrow to disappearI turned in my bed, oh God, I knew they were near'So come on little girl, where do you goA path ahead, or a path to unknown?'With that she arose, her head hung lowShe held herself for only she knowsHer tears held back, her heart like iceIt looks as though she has paid the price.The ice started melting, her tears to flowThe memories flood back, still so many years to goThe pain, the anger all built up insideNowhere to run, nowhere to hide.It will get better, just wait and seeYou'll get a life, though you'll never be fireOpen your heart and love yourselfThe abuse you suffered was NOT your fault.
Teresa Cooper
It did not last: the Devil howling 'Ho, Let Einstein be,' restored the status quo.
John Collings Squire
Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on.
Tahir Shah
The way I figure it, here in New Earth, men's power has won out over women's power, just like it's done on Mainground. But men still fear women's power. No one ever forgets their mother's power to give them nourishment or withhold it. And men specially don't forget it, because they never grow into women themselves, and never lose a child's craving for the comfort of women's bodies.
Chris Beckett
The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.
Michael Moorcock
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in aim at earth and you get neither.
C.S. Lewis
Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.“Hello, Bod,” she said.“Hello,” he said, as he danced with her. “I don’t know your name.”“Names aren’t really important,” she said.“I love your horse. He’s so big! I never knew horses could be that big.”“He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.”“Can I ride him?” asked Bod.“One day,” she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. “One day. Everybody does.”“Promise?”I promise.
Neil Gaiman
Now, why did Kitty, who was the falsest thing on earth, who was in tune with every kind of falsity, by merely suffering somehow remind us of reality? Why did her tears reveal to me what I had learned long ago, but had forgotten in my frenzied love, that there is a draft that we must drink or not be fully human? I knew that one must know the truth. I knew quite well that when one is adult one must raise to one's lips the wine of the truth, heedless that it is not sweet like milk, but draws the mouth with its strength, and celebrate communion with reality[.]
Rebecca West
One truth is clear Whatever is is right.
Alexander Pope
If you don't think it.You'll never do it!
Anthony T.Hincks
All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Erol and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.
J.R.R. Tolkien
We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
J.K. Rowling
Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.
Tahir Shah
Ah, cruel parents indeed, who neglect the religious education of their children; more cruel in some respects than Herod; he slew the bodies of children, these murder souls; he murdered the children of others, these murder their own; he employed the agency of his servants, these do the work of slaughter themselves.
John Angell James
Stop fretting and eat your Madeira Cake..
Diane Samuels
I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.
Harold Geneen
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too?
C.S. Lewis
Life is more fun if you play games.
Roald Dahl
On the canvas of life,Every sweep of the brush matters,Counts for something…
Scott Hastie
To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
Alexander Pope
I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia
Idries Shah
(On the communist regime of Ceaușescu)"Romania," said Eugene, "was twenty million people living inside the imagination of a madman.
Jon Ronson
Patience strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger, extinguishes envy, subdues pride, bridles the tongue.
George Horne
You look... amazing!" And I have to say, I agree. I'm wearing all black - but expensive black. The kind of deep, soft black that you fall into. A simple sleeveless dress from Whistles, the highest of Jimmy Choos, a pair of stunning uncut amethyst earrings. And please don't ask how much it all cost, because that's irrelevant. This is investment shopping. The biggest investment of my life. I haven't eaten anything all day so I'm nice and thin and for once my hair has fallen perfectly into shape. I look... well, I've never looked better in my life.But of course, looks are only part of the package, aren't they?
Sophie Kinsella
In all change well looked into the germinal good out-vails the apparent ill.
Francis Thompson
The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I’d always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.
Neil Cross
Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
G.K. Chesterton
The aunts’ conception of the right to privacy went far enough to allow you to close the toilet door when you were peeing, but no further.
Zen Cho
It wasn't like the World Trade Center, something vile and astonishing within our own borders, happening to people who'd saved coins of the same currency in their piggybanks when they were children. I knew intellectually that shouldn't make a difference, but it seemed to.
Michael Marshall
Penny rolled over, got to her feet, trying to get control of her scattered mind, but Quinn was behind her now and had his powerful arm around her neck.“I will snap your neck, Penny. I swear to God, I will snap your neck. Nothing you can do will stop me.”Penny went limp. “You think the king will let you get away with this, Quinn?” she hissed.“Anyone messes with me, Penny, you or anyone else, and I go on strike. See how well you enjoy life without me and my crews. Without food.
Michael Grant
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
Samuel Johnson
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
C.S. Lewis
Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences.
Ernst Boris Chain
But pecuniary interest is clearly not in your nature. How quaint. I have written about people who don't care for money, but I never expected to meet one. Therefor I conclude that the difficulty concerns integrity. People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appauling obsession with personal integrity." - Vida Winter
Diane Setterfield
Ignoring phone calls leads to a simple life with more free time. Ignoring emails works well also! I do both when I am trying to get things done.
Steven Magee
Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared. 76
Anita Brookner
Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death.
Spike Milligan
There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.What the devil was the reason?
Mary Balogh
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
T.S Eliot
Yet if I was asked to do this again - in fact, if I was ever asked to repeat any of my experiences - I'd have to say, fuck it, bring them on. I've no regrets.This is what it means to be alive.
John Barrowman
There is only one secret to great writing and that's great writing.
Chloe Thurlow
His conscience, like a sunburnt scorpion, was stinging itself to death.
Edward St. Aubyn
I saw her note the way I hovered over the various ethnicities on the form. First the 'white' box, then to the airspace over the 'black' box, a kind of momentary hesitation, a protest of stillness, a staring into the abyss of everything I did not know about myself. She, like me, was made of halves.
Olivia Sudjic
She wisely reasoned that my chosen husband was no ordinary man, that his whole life was absolutely dedicated to God and His service, ad that I must never, never hinder him by trying to put myself first in his heart.
Susannah Spurgeon
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
Margery Williams Bianco
Hierarchy and discipline gave shape to the world;that was what he had always believed.Life was made easy by adherence toa rigid structure.But maybe that only really worked when you were at the top of the ladder,when you were doing well.The further down the rungs you went,the more of a victim of circumstances you became and the less it mattered whether or not you were in control.
James Lovegrove
People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had, she said quietly, staring into the embers. they don't know what it was like, not being in a camp.
Nevil Shute
If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just the ones that thought the most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot. in the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark one Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so in effective in this. And that Heaven and you'll get the earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you'll get neither.
C.S. Lewis
One murder makes a villain millions a hero.
Bishop Beilby Porteus
It’s SpongeBob, Eleanor,” he said, speaking very slowly and clearly as though I were some sort of idiot. “SpongeBob SquarePants?” A semi-human bath sponge with protruding front teeth! On sale as if it were something completely unremarkable! For my entire life, people have said that I’m strange, but really, when I see things like this, I realize that I’m actually relatively normal.
Gail Honeyman
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.
Doris Lessing
Thought is more dangerous than you think.
Wayne Gerard Trotman