Quotes by British Authors - Page 33

magic can make things happen before you do it. It can make things have happened.
Jo Walton
Psychology researchers now claim that it is important for babies to learn how to stop crying by themselves. Fortunately, many parents still prefer to comfort their babies. If they didn't, we might find ourselves living in a society of very solitary people, who had learned to control thier distress rather than to find strength through sharing it.
Naomi Stadlen
For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them we realize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden in every human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old, crafty, secret murderer. How horrible! And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the human envelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within may become altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of death.
Robert S. Hichens
I want to be a Renaissance Woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I just want to do everything.
Emma Watson
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.
Charles Lamb
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
Charles Caleb Colton
It matters very little whether a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress if his discontent does in fact paralyse his power of appreciating what he has got.
G.K. Chesterton
But when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too.
Patrick Ness
You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.
E.M. Forster
Once I really looked at the sky, I wanted to go on looking; it seemed to draw me towards it and make me listen hard, though there was nothing to listen to, not so much as a twig was stirring.
Dodie Smith
It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you thought in a certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it.
W Somerset Maugham
After a long time, I cleared my throat. “So anyway, when we get to Nevada...I think we should rethink yourdad’s rule.”Alex glanced down at me and smiled – the first real smile I’d seen on his face in a long time. “You knowwhat? It’s already been rethought and completely ditched,” he said. And he wrapped his arms around meand we stood looking up at the mountains, with the rising rays of the sun lighting them from the east.
l.a weatherly
Sometimes we have spent so long in the cage that it feels safer to be trapped inside.
Beth Kempton
For any scientist the real challenge is not to stay within the secure garden of the known but to venture out into the wilds of the unknown.
Marcus du Sautoy
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
E.M. Forster
I win.
Abigail Haas
How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware you're alive, unaware that one day you will die.
Rachel Ward
Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?""Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.
Antony Jay
Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.
J.M. Barrie
How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?”Winston thought. “By making him suffer,” he said.“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?...
George Orwell
I never trusted the women i was involved with to tell the truth,because the truth never changes,but as i knew so well,people did.I knew it wasn't everyone,some women did have staying power,but it was impossible to tell which ones they were.Women should have come labelled-it would have made life so much simpler.
Mike Gayle
The ‘seriousness’ of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the significance of the mathematical ideas which it connects. We may say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is ‘significant’ if it can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas. Thus a serious mathematical theorem, a theorem which connects significant ideas, is likely to lead to important advances in mathematics itself and even in other sciences.
G H Hardy
If he had learned anything in manhood, it was that it didn’t matter what other people thought of him—even the ones he respected. In the end, he would patch together a life, with its sorry errors and its triumphs, just as they had.
Conn Iggulden
I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.
George Eliot
And when at last I find you your song will fill the air.
The Beatles
Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,” is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, “the average person,” but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward.
Jerome K. Jerome
To face a man in combat is challenge enough. To find the goddess in a woman is the life work of a man. Hard though the first may be, the second is the harder longer road. But every man seeks the woman of the dream, and only the best of men finds what he seeks.
Rosalind Miles
But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Four Keys of Great Managers:1. "When selecting someone, they select for talent ... not simply experience, intelligence or determination."2. "When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes ... not the right steps."3. "When motivating someone, they focus on strengths ... not on weaknesses."4. "When developing someone, they help him find the right fit ... not simply the next rung on the ladder.
Marcus Buckingham
Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!
Eddie Izzard
Here they [the Jaredites] became a flourishing nation; but, giving way in time to internal dissensions, they divided into factions, which warred with one another until the people were totally destroyed (p. 15).
James E. Talmage
The risen Christ! Once morefaith is upon us, a jubilant brief keeningwith respite:Obedience, bitter joy,the elements, clouds,winds, louvres where the bellmakes its wild mouths:Holy Rus – into the rain’shorizons, peacock-dyed tail feathers of storm,so it goes on.
Geoffrey Hill
The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.
Paul Graham
With the ferrule of his walking-stick Denis began to scratch the boar's long bristly back. The animal moved a little so as to bring himself within easier range of the instrument that evoked in him such delicious sensations; then he stood stock still, softly grunting his contentment. The mud of years flaked off his sides in a grey powdery scurf. "What a pleasure it is," said Denis, "to do somebody a kindness. I believe I enjoy scratching this pig quite as much as he enjoys being scratched. If only one could always be kind with so little expense or trouble...
Aldous Huxley
He that would govern others first should be master of himself.
Philip Massinger
teams build a business. Culture builds the team.
David Hieatt
For some it is harder to wake up to the truth of life than it is to fall into the sleep of death
Dean Cavanagh
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
Winston S. Churchill
The song says respect yourself.But I would rather respect another and then have them respect me in return.
Anthony T.Hincks
So it's off with the shellsuit and on with the Armanis,Bring out the champagne and the caviar sarnies
Roger McGough
She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.
Fay Weldon
Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years’ time.
Idries Shah
In Jesus the full meaning of peace is revealed: he gave peace, made peace and is our peace (Jn. 14:27; Eph. 2:14f.).
Gordon J. Wenham
... history - the lamp which illumines national character...
Lawrence Durrell
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough Without ever having felt sorry for itself.
D.H. Lawrence
It appears - because it has been the case for twenty years - that every problem is solvable...that no matter how badly the world economy slumps there is a pain-free way out of it. Once the realization dawns that there is not, and that the pain will be severe, the question is posed that has not really been posed for twenty years: who should feel it?
Paul Mason
Being an author is to have a toe in the creative pool and a foot in the vat of commerce.
Fennel Hudson
Few of us could speak the other's language, but all of us had by now discovered the lodge's unique 'outside toilet'…which transcended all national barriers. The lodge owner wouldn't let you use it unless you promised to lock yourself in with a special key. Everybody thought this odd, but they understood his concern once inside. The loo was just two parallel blocks of wood laid either side of a big hole in the floor. You went in, squatted down on the blocks, felt the gust of chill air wafting up your nether regions, looked through legs, and watched the bottom fall out of your world for a sheer drop of two thousand feet! The reason for locking the door was obvious. Any unwitting interloper who swung it inwards when you were squatting over that hole was certain to knock you off your perch and straight down it. And that would be a one-way trip to oblivion. With your trousers round your ankles
Frank Kusy
That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no genuine artist would think of denying.
Dorothy L. Sayers
You think that drinking with a serial killer takes you into the midnight currents of the culture? I say bullshit. There's been twelve TV documentaries, three movies and eight books about me. I'm more popular than any of these designed-by-pedophile pop moppets littering the music television and the gossip columns. I've killed more people than Paris Hilton has desemenated, I was famous before she was here and I'll be famous after she's gone. I am the mainstream. I am, in fact, the only true rock star of the modern age. Every newspaper in America never fails to report on my comeback tours, and I get excellent reviews.
Warren Ellis
As a newborn baby breathes and cries, so the signs of life in a newborn Christian are faith and repentance, inhaling the love of God and exhaling an initial cry of distress. And at that point what God provides, exactly as for a newborn infant, is the comfort, protection, and nurturing promise of a mother."If God is our father, the church is our mother." The words are those of the Swiss Reformer John Calvin ... it is as impossible, unnecessary, and undesirable to be a Christian all by yourself as it is to be a newborn baby all by yourself.
N.T. Wright
A dream business that doesn't make money is a living nightmare.
Habeeb Akande
Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.
J.K. Rowling
O’Brien: How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?Winston: By making him suffer.O’Brien: Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.
George Orwell
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow."I've got to go back, haven't I?""That is up to you.""I've got a choice?""Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to…let's say…board a train.""And where would it take me?""On," said Dumbledore simply.
J.K. Rowling
I admire all my three sons-in-law highly. Wickham, perhaps is my favourite; but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane's.
Jane Austen
Beauty and desire to possess have driven men mad for centuries.
Hannah Rothschild
She felt that at some point she must finally and formally talk to Louisa about Hubert, and ask her to acknowledge that the worst possible thing had happened to her as well.
Alan Hollinghurst
And Clifford the same. All that talk! All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forwards! It was just insanity. And it was getting worse, really maniacal.Connie felt washed-out with fear. But at least, Clifford was shifting his grip from her on to Mrs Bolton. He did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was not aware of, the great desert tracts in his consciousness.
D.H. Lawrence