Quotes by British Authors - Page 29

There's an old adage," he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages -- "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die.
Beryl Markham
Fame & fortune come with a price that fame finds insulting and fortune can't afford to pay back.
Dean Cavanagh
Famous Harry Potter," said Malfoy. "Can't even go to a bookshop without making the front page.
J.K. Rowling
Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American Ground?
Alexander Hamilton
In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I was stuck. My feelings about my mother, you see, must be too complicated to easily flow into words.
Ted Hughes
Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come
A.E. Housman
I never told her the other story, in which she stars, in which she is always the heroine – a romanticized story full of cliché images in which I am telling her all the things there has not been enough time for, in which we are doing all the things there has not been time for…
Penelope Lively
When people are cruel it's often said that they have no heart, only a cold space or lump of ice in their chest. This was never true of Avalon. She had no heart, everyone knew, but there was nothing cold about her. In her chest burned an enormous coal, white-hot, brighter than the North Star. North knew the truth about Avalon: she was made of fire, and she would burn them all.
Kirsty Logan
What about our human rights,' demanded Carl, who'd gathered a small deputation of kids within minutes. 'There is a WAR ON,' said Crewman Devlin, shortly. I wondered if this meant grown-ups actually listen to you when there wasn't a war on, because somehow I was sceptical.
Sophia McDougall
It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it—the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west—the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam.
Bernard Lewis
Grace is given of God but knowledge is bought in the market.
Arthur Hugh Clough
The hopes that, in my own heart sown,And cherished by such sun and rain,As Joy and transient Sorrow shed,Have ripened to a harvest there:
Charlotte Brontë
The core – and perhaps unexpected – thing that books do for us is simplify. It sounds odd, because we think of literature as sophisticated. But there are powerful ways in which books organise, and clarify our concerns – and in this sense simplify.
Alain de Botton
Reciprocation was a pretty powerful stimulant to the imagination.
Nick Hornby
There is a large stock on hand; but somehow or other, nobody's experience ever suits us but our own.
Letitia Landon
He said, one has to learn that painting well - in the academic and technical sense - comes right at the bottom of the list. I mean, you've got that ability. So have thousands.
John Fowles
What this letter does is bring us into an atmosphere in which the institution could only wilt and die. The Letter to Philemon
F.F. Bruce
I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man’s assertion of power and control, but if he didn’t think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means.
Abigail Tarttelin
The word 'Terror' is so generally and universally used in connection with everyday trivial matters that it is apt to fail to convey, when intended to do so, its real meaning.
Jim Corbett
The clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored.
Saki
This is stupid. There's work to be done. Tomorrow tens of thousands of us are going to take to the streets and demand fair access to education, and my smashed little heart shouldn't matter. But it does. The whole world is changing, and I just want to be the kind of girl who gets taken in somebody's arms.
Laurie Penny
What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?""Stories. And they give me hope.
Neil Gaiman
Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.
Albus Dumbledore
But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again—their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of another system.
Nadeem Aslam
Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.
Charles Dickens
The demon at length fell to singing a gentle, flickering little song. It was not in any language Sophie knew - or she thought not, until she distinctly heard the word "saucepan" in it several times...
Diana Wynne Jones
It had been many months since I'd shed tears for Tomaso, but grief is like that. It's not a continuous process; it comes in waves. You can keep it at bay for a time, like a dam holding back a lake, but them something triggers an explosion inside of you, shattering the wall and letting loose a flood.
Paul Adam
As you go through life's rich tapestry, you realize that most people you meet aren't fit to shine your shoes. It's a sad fact, but it's true. A good friend is someone who'd hide you if you were on the run for murder. How many of them do you know?
Lemmy Kilmister
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
W Somerset Maugham
How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.
J.R.R. Tolkien
He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.
Julian Barnes
When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible.
Salman Rushdie
All that was required to measure the planet was a man with a stick and a brain. In other words, couple an intellect with some experimental apparatus and almost anything seems achievable.
Simon Singh
Clearly, this was another thing I needed to add to the: ‘repetitive cycle of things that were constantly happening in my life’ list, which currently contained fainting and my ability to find trouble.
Adele Rose
To do is to be – AristotleTo be or not to be – ShakespeareTo be is to do – Jean-Paul SartreDo be do be do – Frank Sinatra
Alannah Foley
He was my mum and dad's best friend. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of wizard prison and he's on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though...keep up with my news...check if I'm happy...
J.K. Rowling
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
Bertrand Russell
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
George Eliot
Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking, too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?
Graham Greene
I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can't help making fly-traps, and men can't help making symbols. That's what the human brain is there for - the turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.
Aldous Huxley
He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot.
Mark Haddon
I'm not proud to admit I once owned a fringed cowgirl jacket.
Isabella Blow
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Douglas Adams
Write It, Work It, Publish
Cherry-Ann Carew
You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.
Ian McDonald
Do I look stupid?" snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy mustache.
J.K. Rowling
With privilege comes responsibility, you must understand that. People expect us to lead by example and we shall not disappoint them.
Ben Elton
It was safe to assume he'd not only read the play but then re-read it, cross-referenced the annotations, and probably joined an online chat group called Buds of the Bard or something equally nerdy
Simon Holt
There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.
Arthur Koestler
When Danny finally got off his knee, he took her by surprise again. He immediately began to tap a number on his mobile. Beth knew only too well who would be on the other end of the line. 'She said yes!' Danny announced triumphantly. Beth smiled as she held the diamond under the light and took a closer look.
Jeffrey Archer
Never test another man by your own weakness.
Joseph Conrad
Being a novice is safe. When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it, you are not safe any more. Being an expert opens you up to judgement.
Helen Macdonald
But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.
G.K. Chesterton
Who really owns the Earth?Corporations? Governments?Charity Organizations?Or...Should it be the people?You decide!
Anthony T.Hincks
Men know that women are an overmatch for them and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
Samuel Johnson
[What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum]: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers.
Salman Rushdie
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
Arnold Joseph Toynbee