Quotes by British Authors - Page 49

Many past mistakes paves the road to future discoveries.
Steven Magee
The wise man will follow a star, low and large and fierce in the heavens, but the nearer he comes to it the smaller and smaller it will grow,till he finds it the humble lantern over some little inn or stable. Not till we know the high things shall we know how lowly they are.
G.K. Chesterton
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.
Philip James Bailey
Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.
Virginia Woolf
They had lived and known glory, and then they were ddead. She was alive and they were not, and nothing but a heartbeat separated her from them
Rosie Thomas
I Speculate on the origins of the universe .But in reality i believe the true facts are those of simple origins.And the universe is for sure out there.
Charlie waud
It may take many voices for people to hear the same message.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Economics has made good on its promise to deliver prosperity and democratic freedom to much of the world, but in doing away with the age-old problems of humanity, it has opened up a crisis of an entirely new variety.
Philip Roscoe
The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face.
John Fowles
Ambition interests me because it’s such a surefire indicator of damage.
Peter Morgan
Dwell upon the brightest parts in every prospect... and strive to be pleased with the present circumstances.
Abraham Tucker
The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat With an indolent expression and an undulating throat - Like an unsuccessful literary man.
Hilaire Belloc
Wild!" Ron said, twiddling the replay knob on the side. "I can make that old bloke down there pick his nose again... and again... and again...
J.K. Rowling
The only way to stop hurting other people is to stop hurting yourself.
Menna van Praag
The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.
Charles Kingsley
Popular applause veers with the wind.
John Bright
We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile phone upgrades. Far fewer.Yet, every decade, global consumption continues to increase relentlessly.
Stephen Emmott
Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability.
Alain de Botton
Don't accentuate our differences,but instead focus on our similarities.
Anthony T.Hincks
Of course Tucker Crowe was in pain when he made [the record], but he couldn't just march into a recording studio and start howling. He'd have sounded mad and pathetic. He had to calm the rage, tame it and shape it so that it could be contained in the tight-fitting songs. Then he had to dress it up so that it sounded more like itself.
Nick Hornby
You took my heart and you held it in your mouthAnd, with a word all my love came rushing outAnd, every whisper, it's the worst, emptied out by a single wordThere is a hollow in me now...And Every whisper, every sighEats away at this heart of mineAnd there is a hollow in me now.So I put my faith in something unknownI'm living on such sweet nothingBut I'm trying to hope with nothing to holdI'm living on such sweet nothing.
Florence Welch
And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn’t know was a feather on those wings. I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne.
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe--his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.
T.H. White
Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.
Terry Pratchett
He pinned me in place with a direct look, his dark brown eyes smoldering. “You’re Mary Jane,” he said finally. “And you have all these Flash Thompsons and Harry Osborns hovering around you, trying to make a move. Because...you’re basically amazing.
J.M. Richards
By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.''I shall be delighted.''You don't mind breaking the law?''Not in the least.''Nor running a chance of arrest?''Not in a good cause.''Oh, the cause is excellent!''Then I am your man.''I was sure that I might rely on you.
Arthur Conan Doyle
But look after yourself - there will be great dangers on the way. Remember, the right road is never the easy road.
Michael Morpurgo
The world commands our desire for purity but bids that we not be too precise about it.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?
P.G. Wodehouse
hope for the best, prepare for the worst
Chris Bradford
Patience is all that I have had for fifteen years, more grey hairs, rotted teeth and the continuing decline of my Kingdom my only reward. Patience, Magnar, has overdue debts to be paid.(King Klonag)
Adrian G. Hilder
Faraday has the Cage, Tesla has the Coil and Magee has the Sandwich!
Steven Magee
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.
Michael Moorcock
Let [the wife] guard, as much as possible, against a gloomy and moody disposition, which causes her to move about with the silence and cloudiness of a spectre; for who likes to dwell in a haunted house?
John Angell James
Oh for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts.
John Keats
To establish that a rule is likely to be true, one must try to prove it false.
Stuart Sutherland
The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one.
Idries Shah
Each day is precious when we consider what we can do to serve God and His Kingdom.
Elizabeth George
you do your own time in prison. You don't do anyone else's time for them.
Neil Gaiman
Everyone’s alone—or so it seems to me.They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;They make faces, and think they understand each other,And I’m sure they don’t. Is that delusion?Can we only loveSomething created in our own imaginations?
T.S Eliot
Nature to all things fixed the limits fitAnd wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.As on the land while here the ocean gains.In other parts it leaves wide sandy plainsThus in the soul while memory prevails,The solid power of understanding failsWhere beams of warm imagination play,The memory's soft figures melt awayOne science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human witNot only bounded to peculiar arts,But oft in those confined to single partsLike kings, we lose the conquests gained before,By vain ambition still to make them moreEach might his several province well command,Would all but stoop to what they understand.
Alexander Pope
He was massive, a veritable Arnold Schwarzenegger of a cat, with a wide, handsome face and a proud, lionish expression.
Nicholas Dodman
Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down.
Terry Pratchett
Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and also mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song.O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.
Richard Llewellyn
You'll find that more doors open if you approach them with an open heart rather than a closed mind.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Tumble me down, and I will sitUpon my ruines (smiling yet:)Teare me to tatters; yet I'le bePatient in my necessitie.Laugh at my scraps of cloathes, and shunMe, as a fear'd infection:Yet scarre-crow-like I'le walk as one,Neglecting thy derision.
Robert Herrick
I glory in the emotionally commonplace
Lionel Shriver
Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
Aldous Huxley
I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama.
Jon Ronson
Step up to red alert."Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb." - Rimmer & Kryten, "Red Dwarf
Rob Grant
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
Winston S. Churchill
Every layer of complexity creates greater distance from life’s simple truths.
Fennel Hudson
For rigorous teachers seized my youth,And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire,Showed me the high, white star of Truth,There bade me gaze, and there aspire.Even now their whispers pierce the gloom'What dost thou in this living tomb?
Matthew Arnold
A man's vanity tells him what is honour a man's conscience what is justice.
Walter Savage Landor
Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
P.G. Wodehouse
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
Stephen Fry
It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until 'Juneteenth'. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state—a state that had its own courageous revolution—from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today that they will join their fore-runners in the flat-earth community, and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks—as a joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair, and take care to ensure that their tale is told.
Christopher Hitchens
We are not always shaped by our parents, Cas. We're shaped by our choices.
Sarah Dalton
People get the wrong idea. I blame science-fiction writers, personally. It annoys me how they confuse the whole robot issue. I tell you, if I met that Asimov bloke, I’d harm him, or at least through inaction allow him to come to harm.
Toby Frost