Quotes by British Authors - Page 27

Anyone who says "Trust me" is the last motherfucker you should ever trust.
R.D. Ronald
Now, you two – this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you've – you've blown up a toilet or –""Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet.""Great idea though, thanks, Mum.
J.K. Rowling
The end of times?" said Nanny. "Look, Tiff, Esme tol' me to say, if you want to see Esmerelda Weatherwax, then just you look around. She is here. Us witches don't mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories - they're there to be cherished.
Terry Pratchett
When you feel sad, you are participating in a venerable experience, to which I, this monument, am dedicated. Your sense of loss and disappointment, of frustrated hopes and grief at your own inadequacy, elevate you to serious company. Do not ignore of throw away your grief
Alain de Botton
First law of gossip - there's no point knowing something if somebody else doesn't know you know it.
Ben Aaronovitch
It’s so peaceful. I could go to sleep in here.” His eyes flickered to me once more, and for a dizzying second I wasn’t thinking about sleep or storms but about pressing my lips to his. I gave my head a slight shake and tried to slow my pulse
J.M. Richards
Morning dawns when the grace overcomes nature.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
It’s very silly,” she said, “but I go on with it in spite of myself. I’m afraid I’m too easily pleased; no novel is so silly I can’t read it.
Henry James
A closed heart is the most self limiting factor in life. Start to listen to your heartfelt desires.
Steven Redhead
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
Aldous Huxley
Charity groped for the phone, coming up with it at last and croaking "hello" in a voice that sounded exactly like a bullfrog's mating call. Which made a kind of twisted sense -- last night she'd been hunting for a mate as well.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.
Terry Pratchett
Always allocate enough time to pursue the things that are of value to you.
Steven Redhead
When one's expectations are reduced to zero one really appreciates everything one does have.
Stephen Hawking
[W]e are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.
Anthony Lane
During our first date,I wanted to hold your hand so badI almost cut mine offand threw it at youto see if you would catch it
Colin Gilbert
It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to be Lazarus and commune.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Saying of the ProphetInk and BloodThe ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.
Idries Shah
Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.
John Stuart Mill
Some people were born to the shape they would occupy all their lives.("Wait")
Conrad Williams
No,' she said. 'No, I don't reckon that's what I do now. Are you watchin', Mrs Gogol? Are you watchin' real close?' Her gaze travelled the room and rested for just a fraction of a second on Magrat. Then she reached over, carefully, and thrust her arm up to the elbow into the burning torch. And the doll in Erzulie Gogol's hands burst into flame. It went on blazing even after the witch had screamed and dropped it on to the floor. It went on burning until Nanny Ogg ambled over with a jug of fruit juice from the buffet, whistling between her teeth, and put it out. Granny withdrew her hand. It was unscathed.
Terry Pratchett
Move on. Be well. Go for it!
Sally Stubbs
Approaching a police car is a very dangerous activity to engage in.
Steven Magee
There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.
Mary Renault
Death so called is a thing which makes men weep And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.
Lord Byron
In fact-Dr. Sheppard!
Agatha Christie
I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more.
Richard Lovelace
For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.
Sarah Waters
Historians are interested in ideas not only because they influence societies, but because they reveal the societies that give rise to them.
Christopher Hill
Days passed in a grey fog. I was becalmed. Without energy, without hope, with no sight of land, I could remember feeling better but I somehow couldn't believe in it. There was nothing but this.
Alexis Hall
A sunset will color your dreams.And a sunrise will color your smile.It's all God asks.
Anthony T.Hincks
Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms with the world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.
David F. Wells
Lucy happily settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose she'd ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye.
Helen Oyeyemi
And this way, l'll leave everything behind before it gets the chance to do the same to me.
Holly Smale
Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)
Idries Shah
They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.
Virginia Woolf
I know, for example, that Mr. Petersen did not experience the flow of time in the same way that I did during those last sixteen months. He told me often, particularly towards the end, that for him time had become a slow, peaceful drift. If I had to guess why this was the case, I'd say that maybe it was because this was time he never expected to have. Or maybe it was more than he was now letting time drift. There was a certain type of contentment in his outlook, which never strayed too far into the future. His life had become simple and uncluttered, and when you're living like that, I think time can seem to stretch out for ever. Matters only change when you start fretting about all the things you need to get done. The more stuff you try to force into it, the less accommodating time becomes.
Gavin Extence
It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...
Joseph Conrad
I didn't feel like I had control over anything else in my life, but food was something I could control, so I did.
Zayn Malik
The time is short and the hills is dark and I's got miles to go before I sleeps. Is is no easy road.
Ian McDonald
There was less of him now. There was less of them all. Officers and men dragged themselves around in uniforms three sizes too big, new holes punched into every belt, every collar hanging loose. They were a garrison of skinny boys performing a play about soldiers.
Chris Cleave
That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .
Debbie Howells
Modern civilisation does not generate an ethical framework for human life.
Simon du Plock
How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.
Christopher Hitchens
He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!''For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.''No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.
Emily Brontë
Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.
Mark Rowlands
I want that. I want that awful intense and serious unhappiness, cos then I might feel better, and then I might be happy.
David Thewlis
I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.
Benjamin Disraeli
One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours' sleep a day--I cannot recall for the moment how many--made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. However, there you are. I've given you the main idea of the thing; and a German doctor says that early rising causes insanity.
P.G. Wodehouse
George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secret; my strength.
Christopher Isherwood
I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
Elvis Costello
No, the events which I am about to describe were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society and, particularly at a time of war, this is something I cannot risk.
Anthony Horowitz
There is a further trouble; no matter how meticulous the scientist, he or she cannot be separated from the experiment itself. Impossible to detach the observer from the observed. A great deal of scientific truth has later turned out to be its observer's fiction. It is irrational to assume that this is no longer the case.
Jeanette Winterson
You see, dear—I think there are two types of people in the world. Those who divide the world up into two kinds of people... and those who don't.
Tony Hendra
The first time is always the hardest
Sarwat Chadda
Without the friendship we'd never have discovered the reason we were friends.
Mike A. Lancaster
Living in the Spirit changes your attitude, thinking, and ultimately your actions.
Elizabeth George
An English teacher at school once said to her, 'Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.' Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it's waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn't speak for days.
Maggie O'Farrell
I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.
Ouida
The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life. The world of existence is fleeting, vague, without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it contains all thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical objects, everything that can do either good or harm, everything that makes any difference to the value of life and the world. According to our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other.
Bertrand Russell