Quotes by British Authors - Page 25

You'll stay with me? Until the very end, said James. They won't be able to see you? asked Harry. We are part of you, said Sirius. Invisible to anyone else.
J.K. Rowling
Most often it is in heartache that we love more boldly.
Jill Telford
I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.
Sebastian Faulks
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon
In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is "good". Nor is there any way of definitely proving that--for instance--Warwick Beeping is "bad". Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.
George Orwell
The road to the new society had lengthened and become overgrown sadly since 1904. The working class in many thousands had been shown its errors in thinking, but persisted in them. Very well: the working class must have the rigours of capitalism, and if the rigours were harsh - it serves them right for not accepting socialism.
Robert Barltrop
Rose had the sort of eyes that manage perfectly well with things close by, but entirely blur out things far away. Because of this even the brightest stars had only appeared as silvery smudges in the darkness. In all her life, Rose had never properly seen a star.Tonight there was a sky full.Rose looked up, and it was like walking into a dark room and someone switching on the universe.
Hilary McKay
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Understanding why so many western women are giving birth to unnaturally large babies that either damage the birth canal or will not fit down it is one of the greatest challenges to modern medicine.
Steven Magee
I gulped and remained silent, a tear streamed down my face as I looked away, hoping she didn’t notice.
Emily Williams
you roll me out flat
D.H. Lawrence
My 11 #books come without pomp n frills, for all seeking #true #meaning & unafraid of overcoming past conditioning. #Rewards are infinite
Michael Levy
MAN is a slave only to his own mental lethargy.
Mina Loy
This has serveral consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms--translation: all your bank account are belong to us--
Charles Stross
Success is simply the wisdom born out of so called failures
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot readThe hunter's waking thoughts.
W.H. Auden
Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.
C.S. Lewis
If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves.
C.S. Lewis
After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.
George Eliot
The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative.Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young-man - all present still, preserved as fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died -what is there to be afra
Christopher Isherwood
There is no better way to live God’s way than to have His Word in your heart and mind.
Elizabeth George
I have learned that the libido, like Elvis and jealousy, never dies. I know copulators of eighty-five. Who said you need an erection, a body or an orgasm for sex?
Hanif Kureishi
Yet I must tell you, that all these graces which are expressed by passions of sorrow, fear, joy, hope, love, are not so certainly to be tried by the passion that is in them, as by the will that is either contained in them, or supposed in them; not as acts of the sensitive, but of the rational appetite (358).
Richard Baxter
It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If grief could burn outLike a sunken coal,The heart would rest quiet, The unrent soulBe still as a veil; But I have watched all nightThe fire grow silent, The grey ash soft:And I stir the stubborn flintThe flames have left, And grief stirs, and the deftHeart lies impotent.
Philip Larkin
The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle.
Charlotte Brontë
Within a year or two, however, a couple of the first things I wrote – ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and ‘God Save The Queen’ – really hit their target. I’d like to thank the British public library system: that was my training ground, that’s where I learned to throw those verbal grenades. I wasn’t just throwing bricks through shop windows as a voice of rebellion, I was throwing words where they really mattered. Words count.
John Lydon
Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.
Robert Harris
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good,’“ he sang to the crabs and the spiders and the palmetto beetles and the lizards and the night. ‘“Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.
Neil Gaiman
The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the eatable part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience.
Alfred Russel Wallace
It's wearying, like Caliban buttonholing you in hell and telling you the struggle he's having getting along with himself.
Derek Raymond
I think women sign on for some ideal when they get married, and when they realise they haven't got anything close to what they want, they bury their disappointment.
Bella Pollen
I see you are —”“Dumbledore’s man through and through,” said Harry. “That’s right.
J.K. Rowling
In grief we know the worst of what we feel But who can tell the end of what we fear?
Hannah More
I'm not a lady, I'm a witch.
Terry Pratchett
When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that's when I think life is over.
Audrey Hepburn
Like when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming?
Lee Child
Loyalty is just the wheels on the bus ... meaning that it keeps things moving but it's neutral when it comes to the direction they move in.
M.R. Carey
In truth, she disliked books. She felt a peculiar disquiet when opening the pages. She had felt it since childhood. She did not know why. Something in the act itself, the immersion, the seclusion, was disturbing. Reading was an affirmation of being alone, of being separate, trapped. Books were like oubliettes. Her preference was for company, the tactile world, atoms.
Sarah Hall
According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cookethat Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their liveswere so hard that they didn’t really know what happiness was anyway.
David Byrne
Wisdom is when you understand what, previously, at best you only knew.
Idries Shah
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and wrong.
Henry James
Five words that were the hardest words I would ever have to say,Five pillars of my faith that couldn't save him that day.Five rivers, the Panj Aab, that didn't flow through his veins.Five minutes that changed our world forever.
Ruth Ahmed
It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory.
Michel Faber
What have I done for you England my England? What is there I would not do England my own?
W. E. Henley
You must learn to forgive a man when he's in love. He's always a nuisance.
Rudyard Kipling
Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.
Isaac Watts
You can never be wise unless you love reading.
Samuel Johnson
A drop of ink may make a million think.
George Gordon Byron
Those miserable women who blame the men who let them down for their misery and isolation enact every day the initial mistake of sacrificing their personal responsibility for themselves.
Germaine Greer
The years lay spread out before her, spacious untouched canvases on which she was presently going to paint the picture of her life. It was to be a very beautiful picture, she said to herself with an extraordinary feeling of proud confidence; not beautiful because of any gifts or skill of hers, for never was a woman more giftless, but because of all the untiring little touches, the ceaseless care for detail, the patient painting out of mistakes; and every touch and every detail was going to be aglow with the bright colours of happiness.
Elizabeth von Arnim
Create something. Create something ugly. Create something beautiful.  I don't care what it is. Create it. 
Jill Telford
Numinous," Ursula said, breaking the silence eventually. "There's a spark of the divine in the world -- not God, er'er done with God, but something. Is it love? Not silly romantic love, but something more profound...""I think it's perhaps something we don't have a name for," Teddy said. "We want to name everything. Perhaps that's where we've gone wrong.""'And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.' Having dominion over everything has been a terrible curse."Afterwards -- because it turned out there was an afterwards for Teddy -- he resolved that he would try always to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all.
Kate Atkinson
The third and, given due consideration, most probable of all my theorems, is that life is ordered by the principles of some religion so peculiar and obscure it has no followers, and none may fathom it, nor know the rituals by which to court its favor.
Alan Moore
We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution---it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad---peace be upon Him!---tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be.
Zadie Smith
Nell looks at the label and comes to."Oh, I'd never wear it. I like to buy things on a cost-per-wear basis. This dress would probably work out at like...thirty pounds a wear. No. I couldn't.""You don't ever do something just because it makes you feel good?" The assistant shrugs. "Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris.
Jojo Moyes
There is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the imagination.
Virginia Woolf
Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley
Alex Garland
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell