Quotes by British Authors - Page 65

The boy was a model pupil, forgettable and easily forgotten, and he sent much of his spare time in the back of the English class where there were shelves of old paperbacks, and in the school library, a large room filled with books and old armchairs, where he read stories as enthusiastically as some children ate.
Neil Gaiman
He doesn't mind if he dies... indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it.
William Golding
I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalized voice.'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains.' ("Laura")
Saki
When speculation has done its worst two and two still make four.
Samuel Johnson
The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the book'd caught my attention, 'it's about the history of opticians. What are you about?
David Mitchell
War is ever the folly of the ignorant. But I have seen much to convince me some wars must be fought, to the bitterest end if need be.
Anthony Ryan
As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.
Marina Lewycka
Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.""Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that.
Douglas Adams
But still try for who knows what is possible!
Michael Faraday
This was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is.
Elizabeth von Arnim
Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.
C.S. Lewis
Every writer is first a reader, and what we read matters.
Sara Ahmed
No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.
Lewis Carroll
Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in theuniverse, except that everyone else is still here.
Simon Van Booy
Well, no, not married as such, but yes, there is a specific girl that I'm not married to.
Douglas Adams
To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea air, sunshine, and patience, Watson—all else will come.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.
Jerome K. Jerome
Did people... really kiss like that? She had had NO idea. She had imagined being kissed, and in her imagination she had been swept away by the sheer romance of the meeting of lips. In her naivete she had not considered the possibility that a kiss, as a prelude to sexual activity, might have powerful effects on parts of her body, in fact, even parts she had been only half aware of possessing. She ached and throbbed in all sorts of unfamiliar places
Mary Balogh
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
John Ruskin
Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!
J.K. Rowling
The only way to get over the pain is to face it, embrace it, hug it and learn the lessons embedded within it.
Adele Theron
... but now men who could work preferred to beg, and the artists forgot that their calling was noble and became imitators instead of creators, charging exorbitant sums for the rubbish they churned out with one eye closed.
Pauline Gedge
I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can’t, and you hate yourself because you can’t, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God’s help you can command your will when you can’t command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn’t appear to agree with us.
Elizabeth Goudge
am i insane" asked alice"yes, but all the best people are" replied her father
Lewis Carroll
... one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.
Agatha Christie
Looking for happiness is a sure way to sadness, I think. You have to take each moment as it comes.
Benedict Cumberbatch
No reason to feel depressed about being depressed. A depression can be a golden opportunity to collect the pieces and build ourselves anew. Global Souls are always on the move, nomads at heart, connected to various cities, commuters between cultures, both from here and everywhere.
Elif Shafak
Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?
Lewis Carroll
You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty was the new anything. Eighty was just eighty.
John Lanchester
And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”“A pit full of fire.”“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”“No, sir.”“What must you do to avoid it?”I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.
Charlotte Brontë
We are articulate but we are not particularly conversational. An Englishman won't talk for the sake of talking. He doesn't mind silence. But after the silence he sometimes says something.
Robert Morley
My darling I still love you,no matter that you're gone.You'll always be with me,forever and ever more.
Anthony T.Hincks
Failure ... is in a sense the highway to success inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.
John Keats
Oh, those hateful sods will never make it to Heaven. They’re all on an express elevator to the gay spit-roast dungeon in Hell. Within five minutes of kicking the bucket, they’ll have demon balls swollen with fiery spunk slapping off their shapeless chins.
Michael Logan
Fine art is that in which the hand the head and the heart of man go together.
John Ruskin
I'm not perfect. Never have been.Never will be.~ Louis Tomlinson
Louis Tomlinson
I can't stand men crying. It's wrong, isn't it? Their faces aren't made for it, they kind of crumple; it's painful to watch.
Rachel Ward
Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?
Terry Pratchett
I’m not denying their kindness,” said the Rani. “But after all kindness isn’t the only virtue.
Aldous Huxley
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways...
Terry Pratchett
The real failure is not the one who falls down, it's the one who refuses to get up.
Habeeb Akande
Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.
Jane Austen
Damn your principles! Stick to your party!
Benjamin Disraeli
For if this God exists, I thought, and if even you – with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell – can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt, by shutting the eyes and leaping once and for all: if you are a saint, it’s not so difficult to be a saint. It’s something He can demand of any of us, leap.
Graham Greene
One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-natured, a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to gather round and say what a pity it all is.
P.G. Wodehouse
Nancy Astor: "Sir, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea."Winston Churchill: "Madame,i f you were my wife, I'd drink it!"(Exchange with Winston Churchill)
Nancy Astor the Viscountess Astor
Everyone I've ever met who was worth knowing was a bit different at school. You just need to find your people''Find my people?''Your tribe
Jojo Moyes
An answer is always a form of death.
John Fowles
He is in love with the land that is always overThe next hill and the next, with the bird that is never,Caught, with the room beyond the looking glass.He likes the half-hid, the half-heard, the half-lit,The man in the fog, the road without an ending …
A.S.J. Tessimond
It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.
Graham Greene
Human improvement is from within outward.
James Froude
He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.
Terry Pratchett
If you control the media, the government, the police and military, the religions, the education system, and the basic needs in life then I guess that the only thing left to control is the people.Oh...sorry, I spoke too late.
Anthony T.Hincks
He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.“‘How about my present?’ she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.“Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!“No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I’m afraid.“All right, Dora, don’t you worry. You’ll get your two quid all right. We aren’t paying by results.“He made a clumsy gesture. ‘Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.’“Dora brought it. Ah, that’s better. That at least doesn’t fail.
George Orwell
But everyone has a voice, and everyone sings. Oh, we all do it differently. Some of us sing quietly, alone, only in the dead of night or in the shower. Some of us sing a cappella, and some stand on a stage beside a band and let the whole world share their song. Some of us, some of us don’t sing at all, like that. We sing with other instruments: There’s song in stores, and in art, and in getting up before the dawn and putting food onto the table. There are angry songs and sad songs and songs that make you want to dance. But everybody has a song to sing, their own personal story leaked into the world. And mine is one of love.
Fox Benwell
We are what we believe we are!
C.S. Lewis
Life is an adventure I am enjoying creating.
Jay Woodman
Humans elect leaders on the basis of the promises they make. We [vampires] try to elect ours based solely on the strength of their character.
Darren Shan
The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
W.H. Auden