Quotes by British Authors - Page 26

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!
Charles Dickens
No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.
Phyllis Bottome
Working a 40 hour work week is a very shallow and unfulfilling experience for many people.
Steven Magee
Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.
Jeanette Winterson
Poetry makes nothing happen.
W.H. Auden
It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling. The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to his species.
John Ruskin
Before we can pray "Lord Thy Kingdom come " we must be willing to pray "My Kingdom go."
Alan Redpath
That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.
A.S. Byatt
The days and the light feel like brief moments of torture, put here to remind us of what we don’t have any more. Joy is instantaneous, that, is the wonder of joy. Misery and suffering sneak up on someone like a bastard. They drip into your brain slowly, over time. Until one morning you wake up crying and you have no idea why.
Craig Stone
Our experiences of all forms of gender prejudice - from daily sexism to distressing harassment to sexual violence - are part of a continuum that impacts all of us, all the time, shaping ourselves, and our ideas about the world. To include stories of assault and rape within a project documenting everyday experiences of gender imbalance is simply to extend its boundaries to the most extreme manifestations of that prejudice. To see how great the damage can become when the minor, "unimportant" issues are allowed to pass without comment. To prove how the steady drip-drip-drip of sexism and sexualization and objectification is connected to the assumption of ownership and control over women's bodies, and how the background noise of harassment and disrespect connects to the assertion of power that is violence and rape.
Laura Bates
Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.
Charles Darwin
What is freedom? It consists in two things: to know each his own limitations and accept them – that is the same thing as to know oneself, and accept oneself as one is, without fear, or envy, or distaste; and to recognise and accept the conditions under which one lives, also without fear or envy, or distaste. When you do this, you shall be free.
Ann Bridge
It's not a job but a condition.(Alan Garner on writing)
Alan Garner
All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.
Richard de Bury
the war taught me that nothing counts as much as loyalty" "Bullshit. you still haven't learned that when humans are under pressure, we're all willing to lie" "even to the people we care?" "we lie more to our loved ones, because we care about them so damn much. why do you think we tell the truth to priests and shrinks and total strangers we meet on trains? it's because we don't love them, so we don't care what they think.
Ken Follett
And only the Master shall praise us and only the Master shall blame And no one shall work for money and no one shall work for fame But each for the joy of the working and each in his separate star Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of things as They Are!
Rudyard Kipling
In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
Zadie Smith
The mother of goodwill is freewill, if untainted by evil.
Christian Hunt
It's not just the wounded who suffer.
David Powning
And see the peaceful trees extendtheir myriad leaves in leisured dance—they bear the weight of sky and cloudupon the fountain of their veins.
Kathleen Raine
Death preserves an ideal.
Rosie Thomas
You're just a huge romantic at heart, aren't you?""If there's cash involved, I'm anything you want me to be.
Jasper Fforde
To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret.
James Hutton
As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive.
C.S. Lewis
Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm. It completely revolutionized it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science of maths was put back by years.
Douglas Adams
Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: 'My worth is my sexuality. I'm dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.' That shapes their ideas about the world around them: 'No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can't be trusted.' It doesn't take long for children to being to act in accordance with these belief systems.For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant.
Rachel Lloyd
We laughed over our difference then spent years bonding over things that made us the same.
Nikesh Shukla
The private and personal blessings we enjoy-the blessings of immunity safeguard liberty and integrity- deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life.
Jeremy Taylor
It would be nice if the story ended differently - if he had burst into tears and professed his love for me; if he had said the same three words back and hugged me; if he had given it thought and then asked if we could try a relationship. But you know what? I said those three words to a boy who didn’t love me back, at least not in that way. He casually dropped a “love you” later on, and in a platonic ‘you have impacted my life’ way, he was telling the truth. But I knew. He had given it thought, and we were not on the same page. I built up all this courage to say “I love you” for the very first time, and I said those words to a person that couldn’t reciprocate them. But guess what? I don’t regret any of it.
Stephen Lovegrove
No one can give you that which you can find within yourself.
Belsebuub
It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off—that continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves.
Walter Pater
Truth has never been can never be contained in any one creed or system.
Mary Augusta Ward
What we learn is that the scientist is as important a part of this experiment as the electron, and that the scientist and the electron are in fact connected. This experiment is the cornerstone of the holistic universe theory.
Danny Scheinmann
Of course, fairy tales are transmissible. You can catch them, or be infected by them. They are currency that we share with those who walked the world before ever we were here. (Telling stories to my children that I was, in my turn, told by my parents and grandparents makes me feel part of something special and odd, part of the continuous stream of life itself.)
Neil Gaiman
It was [Hugh's] omnipresent fear that some woman might be foisted on him who would turn out to be an adventuress and would blackmail him. This preoccupation made it almost impossible for him to engage a secretary.
Anthony Powell
The "fashion-beauty complex'," representing the corporate interests involved in the fashion and beauty industries, has, Bartky argues, taken over from the family and church as "central producers and regulators of 'femininity'" (1990, p. 39). The fashion-beauty complex promotes itself to women as seeking to, "glorify the female body and to provide opportunities for narcissistic indulgence'' but in fact its aim is to "depreciate woman's body and deal a blow to her narcissism'' so that she will buy more products. The result is that a woman feels constantly deficient and that her body requires "either alteration or else heroic measures merely to conserve it'' (p. 39).
Sheila Jeffreys
When you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.
Jeanette Winterson
Let My worship be in theheart that rejoices, for behold,all acts of love and pleasureare My rituals.
Doreen Valiente
The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.
Dean William R. Inge
Down vith children! Do them in!Boil their bones and fry their skin!Bish them, sqvish them, bash them, mash them!Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them!Offer chocs vith magic powder!Say “Eat up!” then say it louder.Crrram them full of sticky eats,Send them home still guzzling sveets.And in the morning little foolsGo marching off to separate schools.A girl feels sick and goes all pale.She yells, “Hey look! I've grrrown a tail!”A boy who's standing next to herScreams, “Help! I think I'm grrrowing fur!” Another shouts, “Vee look like frrreaks!There's viskers growing on our cheeks!”A boy who vos extremely tallCries out, “Vot's wrong? I'm grrrowing small!”Four tiny legs begin to sprrroutFrom everybody rrround about.And all at vunce, all in a trrrice,There are no children! Only MICE!
Roald Dahl
In some respect Journalism is like science, the best ideas were one that survived and strengthened by opposition.
Ian McEwan
we have quoted freely from the Scriptures and have sought to furnish proof-texts for every statement we have advanced.
Arthur W. Pink
Good to know we're all twelve years old mentally. Keeps things in perspective.
Alexander William Gaskarth
I long for sleep, and for soft English rain. But they do not come.
Michael Cox
…We feel different things. We like different things. It’s like they say with books, no two people ever read the same book. It’s the same with music, yo.
Fox Benwell
A hundred pounds! He couldn't remember ever having seen a hundred pounds, all at one time. He found himself envying his father, who had nothing to worry about except the future of mankind.
John Mortimer
I will bestir myself,' was her resolution, 'and try to be wise if I cannot be good.
Charlotte Brontë
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! a message to us from... human souls we never saw... And yet these arouse us terrify us teach us comfort us open their hearts to us as brothers.
Charles Kingsley
It doesn't matter what you want," Toreth breathed into his ear. "All that matters is what I want. Say it.
Manna Francis
Sometimes when you love someone so deeply, that is the thing that hurts the most.
Anthony T.Hincks
She’s the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She’s the self-made girl!(…)Well, to begin with, the self-made girl’s a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she isn’t self-made at all. We all help to make her, we take such an interest in her.
Henry James
Even thought our problems had driven us up there, it was as if they had somehow, like Daleks, been unable to climb the stairs.
Nick Hornby
I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.
G.K. Chesterton
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
Zadie Smith
Importance of the random: keep brushing up against people, books, experiences we don't yet know what to do with.
Alain de Botton
Integrity is a life where your beliefs and intentions are aligned with your words and actions.
Stephen Lovegrove
He knew more about the death of Lula Landry than he had ever meant or wanted to know; the same would be true of virtually any sentient being in Britain. Bombarded with the story, you grew interested against your will, and before you knew it, you were so well informed, so opinionated about the facts of the case, you would have been unfit to sit on a jury.
Robert Galbraith
You have a faculty for defining the simplest in terms of the grandiose, so that a poor devil like me can't understand it.
Malcolm Bradbury
It is symptomatic of the constricting specialism and the oppressive burden of fact of our time that it has been left to the imagination of a novelist, Marguerite Yourcenar, to create the broadest, the most balanced and in many ways the most authentic interpretation of the affair.
Royston Lambert
Without triers they would never be any successors
Thomas Wright