Quotes by British Authors - Page 34

Ask , and it shall be given until you. That is no vain or untried promise, Ruth!
Elizabeth Gaskell
It you watch a game it's fun. If you play it it's recreation. If you work at it it's golf.
Bob Hope
Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.
China Miéville
Even the air seems to have a smell - earthy and rich and complicated, made out of things living nd things dying and things long dead. The smell of the world where nothing stops moving, nothing stays the same.
M.R. Carey
Get out of here. Yoda so does not have an English accent!''Other than that you're saying I'm a dead ringer?''If the shoe fits.''Sheesh, I hate tall girls.
Joss Stirling
If you're scared, do something.
Elizabeth Wein
Gratitude for being alive is the best way to rise and shine.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Yo Mama’s so old, her memory is in black and white.
Oliver Oliver Reed
There is nothing more exasperating than reading in contemporary guidebooks disparagements of places that are deemed to be "seedy." Do the writers not notice that such places are invariably crowded with people? When a neighborhood is described as "seedy" by some Lonely Planet prude, I immediately head there.
Lawrence Osborne
Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…
Terry Pratchett
When you give a present,you're giving with your heart.Never give thinking of money,or your gift will fall apart.
Anthony T.Hincks
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parent's grave.As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave: He did not think he could stand another moment there. He put his arm around Hermione's shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, and they turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past Dumbledore's mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing gate.
J.K. Rowling
How do you want me to give you that warning?” he added, grinning. Sweat rolled down his chiselled back and he wagged his eyebrows suggestively. “It comes with two settings. One that reads: ‘danger – too hot to handle’ or ‘danger – don’t get too close or you’ll get burnt.
Adele Rose
In fact, second lieutenants were primary-school teachers. Sure, teachers with guns, but a platoon commander was, nonetheless, the guy who sorted out the working day for 30 men under his command, taught their lessons, helped them with their homework, sorted out their petty squabbles and put plasters on their knees when they fell over in the playground.
Patrick Hennessey
A mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable diseases in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might offend some, who certainly have a right to complain; but they do not have a right to censor. They do not have to watch or listen if they are offended: they have an 'off' button on their television sets and radios. After all, it is morally outrageous that moral outrage should be used as an excuse to perpetrate the outrage of censorship on others.
A.C. Grayling
Instead of blue skies and sunshine, there are grey clouds and endless rain that seeps into your bones, your soul.
Cathy Cassidy
Ridiculous," he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.
Robert Galbraith
If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won’t. You’ll already have made that art, and when they’re talking about the last thing you did, you should already be making the next thing.If bad reviews (of whatever kind) upset you, just don’t read them. It’s not like you’ve signed an agreement with the person buying the book to exchange your book for their opinion.Do whatever you have to do to keep making art. I know people who love bad reviews, because it means they’ve made something happen and made people talk; I know people who have never read any of their reviews. It’s their call. You get on with making art.
Neil Gaiman
See? Reading you all night has strengthened me. That’s what God’s love does. If you’re beginning to feel uncomfortable now, it’s because the changes in you are already beginning to happen and one day you’ll be glad to say, Deliver me from meaninglessness.
Ian McEwan
Right!""Right!""You can get there!""I can get there!""You're a natural at counting to two!""I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!""If you can count to two, you can count to anything!""If I can count to two, I can count to anything!""And then the world is your mollusc!""My mollusc! What's a mollusc?
Terry Pratchett
Morning, Bill,' said Lord Tidmouth agreeably.'Go to hell!' said Bill.'Right-ho,' said his lordship.
P.G. Wodehouse
Watching me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of my aching shame.
Sarah Kane
Things, since you left, have not gone well with me: they have taken me from a place where there was gin to a place where there is no gin[.]
Sarah Caudwell
My love has saved me. It wraps strong arms around me when I cry with despair;it gives me the routine of a working week to lend vicarious structure to my shapeless days. It brings me daily laughter, a reason to keep washing...and it slices me open with guilt.
Anna Lyndsey
The law of God was more vindicated by the death of Christ than it would have been had all transgressors been sent to Hell. For the Son of God to suffer for sin was a more glorious establishment of the government of God, than for the whole race to suffer.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The more choices we have, the greater the need for focus.
Tom Butler-Bowdon
I myself beheld the King Charge at the head of all his Table Round, And all his legions crying Christ and him, And break them; and I saw him, after, stand High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume Red as the rising sun with heathen blood, And seeing me, with a great voice he cried, "They are broken, they are broken!" for the King, However mild he seems at home, nor cares For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts— For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs Saying, his knights are better men than he— Yet in this heathen war the fire of God Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives No greater leader.
Alfred Tennyson
The Devil's out of fashion.
Dodie Smith
Human" is a kind of midway creature, reflecting God into the world, and reflecting the world back to God.
N.T. Wright
The thought of hurting him ripped me apart. Ripped me so totally, that I knew, I cared more for him than I did myself.
Samantha Young
Advice for a long and happy life - never tell a writer you have fixed their work. Ever.
C.S. Woolley
Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.
Michael Denton
The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
George Eliot
Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Cory Doctorow
When indeed you positively press your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.("Out Of The Deep")
Walter de la Mare
I listen to the silenceand yearn to be more me,swimming in the sea of myself,learning eternally -finding out where the rocks areand smoothing them into sand.
Jay Woodman
Just because you haven't got a home, doesn't make you homeless.andJust because you don't have a heart, doesn't make you heartless.Now, does it?
Anthony T.Hincks
And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?’ ‘To make them confess.’ ‘No, that is not the reason. Try again.’ ‘To punish them.’ ‘No!’ exclaimed O’Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. ‘No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?
George Orwell
Oh! Let us never never doubt What nobody is sure about.
Hilaire Belloc
Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.
Margaret Drabble
There is no such thing as forcing someone to be free. My obligation is not to my love for him but rather to what this love represents. My obligation is only to myself. Like two parallel lines running alongside each other, Taymour and I could only ever come together if one of us were to break.
Saleem Haddad
The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal endings.
Anthony Powell
To know yourself is to know where you're from
Harriet Evans
Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?
Terry Pratchett
Shocking loss isn't to be shared, no matter how hard you try.
Helen Macdonald
A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover -- but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
George Gordon Byron
Imagination is a gift given to us from God and each one of us use it differently.
Brian Jacques
The end is the best part of any story
Michael Grant
Talk lives in a man’s head, but sometimes it is very lonely because in the heads of many men there is nothing to keep it company - and so talk goes out through the lips.
Beryl Markham
There is an important distinction to be drawn between tolerance of homosexuality and tolerance of sex tourism.
Brian Whitaker
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.
Arthur C. Clarke
It would be superfluous todrive us mad, my dear Watson
Arthur Conan Doyle
Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, "What!? all this, and Christ too?" What is "all this," compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, "I have no wish at all about it." "But if you might wish, which would you choose?" "I would not choose at all." "But if God bade you choose?" "I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take." Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
He needed some sort of membrane between himself and experience, which, for him, became language.(Jeanette Winterson on T.S.Eliot)
Jeanette Winterson
...it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and unused hats and coats, their belongingnesses.
David Mitchell
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
C.P. Snow
In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to do this they have to imagine every disaster and shame that can occur between a man and a woman alone in a room in the dark.
Hilary Mantel
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off!
Sarah Ferguson
By diverting the Dionysian impulse into special rites on special days, the orgy kept it under control, preventing it from surfacing in more insidious and perfidious ways. More than that, it transformed it into an invigorating and liberating—and, in that much, profoundly religious—celebration of life and the life force. It permitted people to escape from their artificial and restricted social roles to regress into a more authentic state of nature, which modern psychologists have associated with the Freudianid or unconscious. It appealed most to marginal groups, since it set aside the usual hierarchies of man over woman, master over slave, patrician over commoner, rich over poor, and citizen over foreigner. In short, it gave people a much-needed break—like modern holidays, but cheaper and more effective.
Neel Burton
I am in favour of illusion, not alienation... Drama must create a factitious spell-binding present moment and imprison the spectator in it. The theatre apes the profound truth that we are extended beings who yet can only exist in the present.
Iris Murdoch