Quotes by British Authors - Page 59

...I’m not going anywhere. Remember, I promised. I’m yours now, forever.
Samantha Towle
The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried.
Aldous Huxley
Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.
Paul Collier
The ego of the mind can entrap you in a web of dilution.
Steven Redhead
All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
And it's only symbolism puts magic and meaning into anything. You of all people should know that. We can make love amongst the gods, or we can screw on a dirty mattress. It's our choice.
Alan Moore
When you think a positive thought, you become positive.
Steve Backley
Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm.
Jane Austen
What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it.Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live.
Ernst F. Schumacher
It was love, she thought, love that never clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of human gain. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem.
Virginia Woolf
In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.
Bill Bryson
I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house.
S.J. Watson
God knows what is my greatest happiness, but I do not. There is no rule about what is happy and good; what suits one would not suit another. And the ways by which perfection is reached vary very much; the medicines necessary for our souls are very different from each other. Thus God leads us by strange ways; we know He wills our happiness, but we neither know what our happiness is, nor the way. We are blind; left to ourselves we should take the wrong way; we must leave it to Him.
John Henry Newman
The substance of what I have to say to the disadvantage of the theory and practice of universal suffrage is that it tends to invert what I should have regarded as the true and natural relation between wisdom and folly. I think that wise and good men ought to rule those who are foolish and bad. To say that the sole function of the wise and good is to preach to their neighbors, and that everyone indiscriminately should be left to do what he likes, should be provided with a ratable share of the sovereign power in the shape of the vote, and that the result of this will be the direction of power by wisdom, seems to me the wildest romance that ever got possession of any considerable number of minds.
James Fitzjames Stephen
If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
C.S. Lewis
Ah, wonderful sleep. I love to sleep. It's one of the things I'm really good at.
Kate Johnson
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame
Charles Caleb Colton
I don’t have perfect teeth. I’m not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn’t want to change anything.
Emma Watson
Women's bodies do not give up their babies so easily, and so silently, is the message. The heart will always remember.
Caitlin Moran
Most police cars are the equivalent of an electrical room on wheels and it does not surprise me that police officers that spend time in such a biologically toxic environment are displaying aggression.
Steven Magee
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli
Cats ask plainly for what they want.
Walter Savage Landor
Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.
Terry Pratchett
I guess a little bit hero is enough. A little bit hero is all anyone really needs to be.
Alexander Gordon Smith
She knew in her heart that to be without optimism that core of reasonless hope in the spirit rather than the brain was a fatal flaw the seed of death.
Anne Perry
The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.
Ben Elton
There are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.
Alexander McCall Smith
Without unscrambled eggs, there was no time travel, no more depredation of the Now, and we could look to a brighter future of long-term thought--and more reading.
Jasper Fforde
Jesus is dangerous to society, to the status quo, and to contemporary piety. This clarity of preaching cannot be allowed to continue. It is like a cold, a virus that infects all who suffer and who love under conditions that only worsen, in a world that blames those who are poor and do not live up to religious expectations.
Megan McKenna
Perhaps she had received diamonds, Strike thought; she had always said she didn't care for such things, but when they argued the glitter of all he could not give her had sometimes been flung back hard in his face...
Robert Galbraith
Every villian is a hero in his own mind.
Tom Hiddleston
Great pals we've always been. In fact there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey.
P.G. Wodehouse
She treated Vanessa and me as if we were visiting budgerigars that needed to be fed and then put somewhere dark for the night.
Alexandra Fuller
The future begins today.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
The human heartIs unknowable.But in my birthplaceThe flowers still smellThe same as always.
Rumer Godden
I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief....And supposedly 95% of Americans say they believe in God - that's worrying....Religions are Trojan horses which conceal profoundly strange psychopathy strains. There's no other explanation for them. The sheer fear of death has been the main engine of religions for a very long time.
J.G. Ballard
I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an expla nation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious, ad hoc magic.
Richard Dawkins
my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.
Nick Hornby
When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.
Philippa Gregory
I will be­lieve that the bat­tle of fem­i­nism is over, and that the fe­male has reached a po­si­tion of equal­ity with the male, when I hear that a coun­try has al­lowed it­self to be turned up­side-down and led to the brink of war by its pas­sion for a to­tally bald woman writer.
Rebecca West
With a slow smile, she brought her gaze back to Kyle’s as she reached behind and unhooked her bra.“Need some help with that?” he asked.“I have had plenty of practice.”“Yeah, well, I could do with the extra practice. Takes way too long to get those things off.
J.A. Belfield
All pursuits are pointless and fruitless unless and until love and compassion are found and then are the foundation and destination of all you do
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Faith is a passionate intuition.
William Wordsworth
Hobbies are for pleasure, but rituals keep you going.
David Mitchell
I was much crazier than I had imagined. Or maybe it was a bad idea to read DSM-IV when you're not a trained professional. Or maybe the American Psychiatric Association had a crazy desire to label all life a mental disorder.
Jon Ronson
I’ve learned a lot about love over these last months. And part of what I’ve learned is that you have to want someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. You have to love a real person, not some dream in your head.
Zoë Marriott
To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.
William Carey
It's over and can't be helped and that's one consolation as they always say in Turkey when they cut the wrong man's head off.
Charles Dickens
I also wish I'd been born with a clearly defined talent for something, or else stupid.
James Hamilton-Paterson
War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive.
Ian Rankin
Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised.
Julian Barnes
If it comes to that," retorted Frederica, with spirit, " I am continually shocked by the things you don't scruple to say to me,cousin! You are quite abominable!"He sighed. "Alas, I know it! The reflection gives me sleepless nights.
Georgette Heyer
You sounded like Dolly parton on helium."(After kristy lee cook of season 7 on american idol,sang her country rendition of the Beatles'"Eight Days A Week.)
Simon Cowell
Could I speak to you for a moment, madam?' said Nannie to Agnes.It was at moments of crisis like this that Mary chiefly envied her Aunt Agnes's imperturbable disposition. Most mothers feel a hideous sinking at the heart when these fatal words are pronounced, but Agnes only showed a kindly and inactive interest.In anyone else Mary might have suspected unusual powers of bluff, hiding trembling knees, a feeling of helpless nausea, flashes of light behind the eyes, storm in the brain, and a general desire to say 'Take double your present wages, but don't tell me what it is you want to speak to me about.' But Agnes, placidly confident in the perfection of her own family and the unassailable security of her own existence, was only capable of feeling a mild curiosity and barely capable of showing it.
Angela Thirkell
It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God's glory, though it may not express itself in song, or even utter its voice with bowed head in humble prayer, yet it silently adores.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
You are asking me questions I cannot answer. All I ask is that you do not fear Avanti’s judgement and that you live your life from this point, as if it were the only life you had. Make the most of each day you live, make every moment count.’~Elden RothDeathsworn Arc 4: Rise of the Archmage
Martyn Stanley
When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.
Jean Rhys
The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.
J.R.R. Tolkien
...perhaps, when it got utterly dark, the peace of the darkness would become the same as light so that my last experience would become as mysterious and musical as my first, so that in my last darkness there might not be the same need of understanding anything so far away as the world anymore.
Derek Raymond
The proper, wise balancingof one's whole life may depend upon thefeasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.
Arnold Bennett