Quotes by British Authors - Page 46

She sighed, she snored, not that she was asleep, only drowsy and heavy, drowsy and heavy, like a field of clover in the sunshine this hot July day, with the bees going round and about and the yellow butterflies.
Virginia Woolf
He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day
Amanda Hodgkinson
Nobody knows you.You don't know yourself.And I, who am half in love with you,What am I in love with?My own imaginings?
D.H. Lawrence
A myth, in its original Greek meaning- muthos- is simply that: a story, one which seeks to render life transparent to an intelligible source.
Jules Cashford
I have never deceived anyone, for I have never belonged to anyone. My independence was all my wealth: I have known no other happiness.
Cora Pearl
It's tougher to look than to leap.
Hugh Cornwell
No one can control their results. We can, however, control our attitude. When we practise compassion, it is most effective when it is unconditional and free from seeking an outcome – compassion is a matter of choice rather than a self-seeking action. And so, if we assist another human being from a place of presence and compassion, we are not looking to find our happiness off the back of others’ suffering. Nor are we trying to control them. Compassion is a conscious choice rather than an emotional knee-jerk reaction.
Christopher Dines
I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once when I was on the bestseller list I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes.
Jacqueline Briskin
After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.
Kenneth Grahame
This was her destiny, and it was a fit and proper one. She was not unwilling, but she knew this was a fateful moment, and she had a sense of doors closing behind her and the path of her life being fixed irrevocably.
Ken Follett
From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Neil Gaiman
Sooner or later our dream will become a true, (Independence)
Davan Yahya Khalil
This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a muddle and a mess, and a sinful waste, and good men have died and more will follow.
Philippa Gregory
Oh, oh. My heart starts that quivering, fluttering thing it does whenever he hints at his desire for me. Lacing his fingers through mine, he moves to close the gap between us. I know he’s only holding my hand, but it’s the manner in which his fingers curl around mine, and the way his eyes bore into me that makes it seem much more intimate.
Siobhan Davis
I was awarded 'Most Aggressive Rider of the Day', generally given to the most spectacular loser of the day.
David Millar
Like almost all girls I don't know the date of my birth: my parents did not trouble to record the day and the time. I only know the year and the season, and I only know the season because my mother had a great desire for asparagus when she was carrying me and swears that she ate it too green and her bellyache brought on my birth.
Philippa Gregory
I emphasize this because some of my colleagues, for whose academic attainments I have great respect, argue" 'You assume too much; this is not proved; this is not strictly scientific. We disagree with your neurology and your psychiatry is misleading, therefore you must be wrong.' My reply has been, with all humility: 'Yes, of course,' and I have returned to the labor ward to be greeted by happy women with their newborn babies in their arms: 'How right you are, Doctor, it is so much easier that way.' That is what really matters to the clinician. He should use the method that gives the best and safest result from all points of view until something better is discovered.
Grantly Dick-Read
I simply wish to continue to learn, & try to do what I have to do, better.
Jay Woodman
Do you want to know what one of the secrets to achieving all of your goals is? You’ve got to be committed.
Steve Backley
I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;Maelström of passions in that hidden seaWhose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;And in small compass the dark waters
Mervyn Peake
What in the blue star-blazes did you see in Jason?" he asked, still forcefully but with his frustration and jealousy under better control."For one thing, Djetth, he wasn't trying to kill me!"
Rowena Cherry
High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air....Up, up the long, delirious, burning blueI’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.Where never lark, or even eagle flew —And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either.
Christopher Hitchens
For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into half halves - to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a weekday. Do you think he cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer - and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the 'dim religious light' of some solemn cathedral?
Lewis Carroll
Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, she had handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favors here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now.
Thomas Hardy
Tears are the noble language of eyes, and when true love of words is destitute. The eye by tears speak, while the tongue is mute.
Robert Herrick
a joy that hurts with sadnessa sadness that is pleasurablea pleasure full of terrora terror that excitesan excitement that calmsa calmness that frightens.
Aidan Chambers
I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth and that things are the sons of heaven.
Samuel Johnson
When challenged by a zealous Popperian to say how evolution could ever be falsified, J. B. S. Haldane famously growled: 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.
Richard Dawkins
What an almighty balls-up. Who snorts a wasp? No sane person snorts a live wasp. It’s like putting your hand up a tiger’s arse. - Egg
Jamie Scallion
Despite her unrepentant aversion to Italian food, which her husband put down to her nation's historic distrust of Italy, she suddenly declared: "All I want in life is to be able to get a take-away pizza!
Julia Stuart
Someone dehumanises you by violating your child and every human thought you had for them is broken, undermined, then gone.
Abigail Tarttelin
Anyone who has lived here for long enough has seen it all before: opposing sides of the political spectrum ferociously criticising each other, getting hot under the collar about this and that, bringing up all sorts of allegations and innuendos. Then just as it looks as if the argument is about to get physical, harmony breaks out. A dialogue is opened, an accord or a compromise is found. And suddenly, just as quickly as it came, all that fiery rhetoric subsides and everyone realizes it was all synthetic, put on for show when all along some deal was imminent anyway. It's as if every politician is merely an actor in a little theatre, and as soon as the curtain falls and the public can't see them any more they all slap each other on the back, tot up the takings and go out for an expensive meal.
Tobias Jones
All the more recent work on alkaptonuria has... strengthened the belief that the homogentisic acid excreted is derived from tyrosine, but why alkaptonuric individuals pass the benzene ring of their tyrosine unbroken and how and where the peculiar chemical change from tyrosine to homogentisic acid is brought about, remain unsolved problems.
Archibald E. Garrod
All day long you sit and sew,Stitch life down for fear it grow,Stitch life down for fear we guessAt the hidden ugliness.Dusty voice that throbs with heat,Hoping with your steel-thin beatTo put stitches in my mind,Make it tidy, make it kind,You shall not: I'll keep it freeThough you turn earth, sky and seaTo a patchwork quilt to keepYour mind snug and warm in sleep!
Edith Sitwell
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.
George Orwell
Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.
C.S. Lewis
This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.
Johnny Rich
You know, Alexia started, “I will be deeply disappointed if the apocalypse starts in Portsmouth.
Gavin G. Smith
Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But--on the top of that--he had merely urged her to be true to it. She swore once more that she would stick to her guns. The black mood fell from her. She turned and looked upon the sea, now far below. The sun, a hollow orb of molten glory, hung quivering in the mist of the Mediterranean; and Lisa entered for a moment into a perfect peace of spirit. She became once with Nature, instead of a being eternally at war with it.
Aleister Crowley
Everything I learned I learned from themovies.
Audrey Hepburn
When by my solitary hearth I sit,When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.
John Keats
If you’ve ever lost someone that you love, and I say ‘love’ and not ‘loved’ because even when they’re gone, you still love them, you know that never goes away, but your life changes.
Rachel Spanswick
Once you start recognizing your own obsessions, you know you’re getting old.
Jeanette Winterson
Here's to the kids who are different,The kids who don't always get A's,The kids who have ears twice the size of their peers,And noses that go on for days...Here's to the kids who are different,The kids they call crazy or dumb,The kids who don't fit, with the guts and the grit,Who dance to a different drum...Here's to the kids who are different,The kids with the mischievous streak,For when they have grown, as history's shown,It's their difference that makes them unique!
Digby Wolfe
Deploring change is the unchangeable habit of all Englishmen. If you find any important figures who really like change such as Bernard Shaw Keir Hardie Lloyd George Selfridge or Disraeli you will find that they are not really English at all but Irish Scotch Welsh American or Jewish. Englishmen make changes sometimes great changes. But secretly or openly they always deplore them.
Raymond Postgate
I'm not a hero but I can end the war
Sally Green
I was cured in my new infamy of all the tired wisdom of age. I would never weary into that tired state again---I swore to myself, I would always be this raw, wet child hereafter...
Clive Barker
I will not stand here to be insulted by you, hedgepig," Mangiz fumed."Then stand somewhere else and I'll insult you there, featherbag!!
Brian Jacques
We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.
John Fowles
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy. ... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.
George Porter
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Charles Dickens
Innocence always calls mutely or protection when we would be so much wise to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
Graham Greene
Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached.
Ian McEwan
But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.
Kazuo Ishiguro
The long-term pain suffered by suppressing emotions is far greater than the short-term pain of confronting them.
Sam Owen
The audience was swell. They were so polite they covered their mouths when they yawned.
Bob Hope
I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudies.
Samuel Butler