Quotes by British Authors - Page 22

It is painful to see someone suffering what you must be suffering- watching someone you love be so cruelly hurt.
Jude Morgan
Legacy is not what's left tomorrow when you're gone. It's what you give, create, impact and contribute today while you're here that then happens to live on.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
I soaked up the drink and it, in return, absorbed me.
Martin Pond
In short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted. Why not? A man's mind–what there is of it–has always the advantage of being masculine,–as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,–and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate, but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.
George Eliot
A voice said, "Climb." And he said, "How shall I climb?the mountains are so steep that I cannot climb."The voice said, "Climb or die."He said, "But how?I see no way up those steep ascents. This that is asked is too hard for me."The voice said, "Climb, or perish, soul and body of theemind and spirit of thee. There is no second chance for any son of man. Climb or die."Then he remembered that he had read in the books of the bravest climbers on the hills of the earth that sometimes they were aware of the presence of a Companion on the mountains who was not one of the earthly party of climbers. And he rememberd a word in the Book of Mountaineers...it heartened him,for it told him that he was created to walk in precarious places, not on the easy levels of life.
Amy Carmichael
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
Stanley Kubrick
Everyone knows revenge is a dish best served when you've had enough time to build up enough vitriol and fury.
Sophie Kinsella
Fred, George, Harry, and Ron were the only ones who knew that the angel on top of the tree was actually a garden gnome that had bitten Fred on the ankle as he pulled up carrots for Christmas dinner. Stupefied, painted gold, stuffed into a miniature tutu and with small wings glued to its back, it glowered down at them all, the ugliest angel Harry had ever seen, with a large bald head like a potato and rather hairy feet.
J.K. Rowling
I find it easy to spot a depressive. The illness is scrawled across them like graffiti.
Sally Brampton
Once, I believed that space couldhave no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’shandwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled.
Arthur C. Clarke
Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion…
Jane Austen
Parameters are the things you bounce off to create art.
Neil Gaiman
... I since cricket match do long to talk with one of my arms around you, then place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter to me than words can say.
E.M. Forster
The mass starts into a million suns;Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,And second planets issue from the first.[The first concept of a 'big bang' theory of the universe.]
Erasmus Darwin
We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.
Angela Carter
But, astonishingly, I'm not broken. I'm not destroyed. Terrified witless, shaking, retching with fear, yes. But no longer insecure. Because during my search for how you died, I somehow found myself to be a different person. ... Living my life. And it wouldn't be my grief for you that toppled the mountain, but love.
Rosamund Lupton
Love is the energy of life.
Robert Browning
I looked over at him, running in the distance. Another faulty, fucked-up brain in a healthy body.
S.J. Watson
She [Mrs. Badger] was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it.
Charles Dickens
The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.
C.S. Lewis
Ignorance is more than bliss, it is a recipe for potential disaster.
Steven Redhead
Friends Make Life Bearable But I have certainty enough For I am sure of you.
Amelia Barr
It was not Christianity which freed the slave: Christianity accepted slavery; Christian ministers defended it; Christian merchants trafficked in human flesh and blood, and drew their profits from the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage. Christian slaveholders treated their slaves as they did the cattle in their fields: they worked them, scourged them, mated them , parted them, and sold them at will. Abolition came with the decline in religious belief, and largely through the efforts of those who were denounced as heretics.
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —And thus we half-men struggle.
Robert Browning
I always thought it was disgusting and ugly, how the weak live their lives depending on each other shamefully licking each other's wounds. A way of life that no one could truly want. I was certain that no greatness could ever come from that. That's what I thought until I met you.
Mark Haddon
Private ownerships of a ...slave chip is illegal in many polities. It tends to be a government monopoly, much like other forms of violence. But I had fallen among pirates and life insurance underwriters.
Charles Stross
If I could talk it like Dahoum, you would never be tired of listening to me.
T.E. Lawrence
What place, then, for a creator?
Stephen Hawking
Eternal Boredom Of The Strifeless Mind
Dean Cavanagh
Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
A.A. Milne
Is there a word for forgetting the name of someone when you want to introduce them to someone else at the same time you realize you've forgotten the name of the person you're introducing them to as well?""No.
Neil Gaiman
I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
Barbara Pym
But even as she was going through with it she knew it was useless, just as it was useless to save a single earring when the other half of the pair was lost
Jhumpa Lahiri
I am a neighbour king to stretch my branches over him, just as Toghrul sheltered me when I was a weed-stalk next to a strong tree.
Bryn Hammond
Yeah, his school! It was his first real home, the place that meant he was special; it meant everything to him, and even after he left -""This is You-Know-Who we're talking about, right? Not you?" inquired Ron.
J.K. Rowling
People who would refuse to share their bread shared their insanity instead.-Three Daughters of Eve
Elif Shafak
They say that it is always poets that die in wars, and I never got over a sense of being in the trenches.
Salena Godden
Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.
Idries Shah
It may be possible that Leukemia in children is linked to the location of the fuse board and the electrical meter on the home.
Steven Magee
Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.10. Plays the violin well.11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.
Johnny Rich
I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.
Terry Pratchett
I’ll promise to think twice before I take any important step you seriously disapprove of.
Anne Brontë
Poirot said "you will find,M.le docteur,if you have much to do with cases of this kind,that they all resemble each other in one thing.""what is that?" I asked curiously"everyone concerned in them has something to hide
Agatha Christie
It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.
Stevie Smith
History is about longing and belonging. It is about the need for permanence and the perception of continuity. It concerns the atavistic desire to find deep sources of identity. We live again in the twelfth or in the fifteenth century, finding echoes and resonances of our own time; we may recognise that some things, such as piety and passion, are never lost; we may also conclude that the great general drama of the human spirit is ever fresh and ever renewed. That is why some of the greatest writers have preferred to see English history as dramatic or epic poetry, which is just as capable of expressing the power and movement of history as any prose narrative; it is a form of singing around a fire.
Peter Ackroyd
She's going to keep up her public facade of stoicism and generosity and getting on with thungs. She knows she can do it, she can do the stiff upper lip thing. I will survive. But behind closed doors the going is rough. It's when she is alone that it hits her. And she is often alone, too often, she things no one should have to be alone as much as she is. It should have been me: her mind is a morass of old songs now, Errol Brown started it. It should have been me.
Kate Pullinger
Though solitude, endured too long,Bids youthful joys too soon decay,Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue,And overclouds my noon of day;When kindly thoughts that would have way,Flow back discouraged to my breast;I know there is, though far away,A home where heart and soul may rest.Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine,The warmer heart will not belie;While mirth, and truth, and friendship shineIn smiling lip and earnest eye.The ice that gathers round my heartMay there be thawed; and sweetly, then,The joys of youth, that now depart,Will come to cheer my soul again.
Anne Brontë
Life is wasted on the living.
Douglas Adams
When it comes to semantic search and the success of your social media policy, truly, there is only one thing that absolutely counts: engagement.
David Amerland
At that time, I well remember whatever could excite - certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creeping outside the basement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to man - too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced by white and blinding bolts.
Charlotte Brontë
He did his best to explain this to Inspector Sloan afterwards. 'A funny feeling, sir.' 'Yes?' Funny feelings were not encouraged at Berebury Police Station.
Catherine Aird
The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.
Idries Shah
Perhaps it is worse when love has flowed freely to find it one day dammed.
Jeanette Winterson
As the sun rises first on mountain-tops and gilds them with his light, and presents one of the most charming sights to the eye of the traveller; so is it one of the most delightful contemplations in the world to mark the glow of the Spirit's light on the head of some saint, who has risen up in spiritual stature.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Charles Dickens
Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to the game of Russian Billiards as once he used to play it with a long vanished girlfriend. A game in which, he says, “...at the termination of a given passage of time...the hidden gate goes down...and all scoring is doubled. This is perhaps an image of how we live. For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity."
Anthony Powell
That great artillery of God Almighty.
William Temple