Quotes by British Authors - Page 87

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.
Idries Shah
I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.
Evelyn Waugh
Happy girls are the prettiest
Audrey Hepburn
Everyone has their heaven.
Adam Baker
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Samuel Johnson
As the sun lowered into the city's skyline, casting an orange glow over the islands, Jana could feel people's hopes rising.
F.C. Malby
In various states of undress, those about her joined in her fondling, lowering their mouths not only to her nipples but to her arms and legs, so that each limb was held captive about the wrist or ankle, and smothered in kisses and gentle nibbles. In this way, perhaps eight of the assembly joined in pleasuring the young lady, taking care to only deliver the sweetest of sensations. The Gentlemen's Club
Emmanuelle de Maupassant
You have one business on earth – to save souls.
John Wesley
And yet - and yet - one's kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to let it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it.
D.H. Lawrence
Nothing links man to man like the frequent passage from hand to hand of a good book.
Walter Sickert
Bad timekeeping will suck the life out of your bank account.
Colin Myles
How could children have spotted what everyone else couldn’t?” “Because we haven’t killed off our imaginations,” Aedan mumbled behind a wrapping of arms and knees.
Jonathan Renshaw
Enlightenment is not about attaining an ultimate level of intelligence or intellect. It is regained by shedding all the ideas, illusion and binds thrust on you and that you then so readily accrue.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. 'If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,' Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chieftest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor fall from a mast-head. 'A pox on them!' she said, realizing for the first time what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood...
Virginia Woolf
Youth, elastic and bright, disdains to be compelled. When conquered, from its very chains it forges implements for freedom; it alights from one baffled flight, only again to soar on untired wing towards some other aim. Previous defeat is made the bridge to pass the tide to another shore; and, if that break down, its fragments become stepping stones. It will feed upon despair, and call it a medicine which is to renovate its dying hopes.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
You can escape completely, seeking an alternative life, or you can play the game and go absent without leave. How you do it is up to you.
Fennel Hudson
A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.
Virginia Woolf
We all know we're one day closer to the end when we wake up in the morning. We just kid ourselves that it's not happening.
Rachel Ward
Your advice seems a little ironical.""Oh, you may either follow it or reverse it—that is its chief beauty. It is equally good taken either way.
Thomas Henry Lister
Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.
Warsan Shire
My name it means nothingmy fortune is lessMy future is shrouded in dark wildernessSunshine is far away, clouds linger onEverything I posessed - Now they are goneOh where can I go to and what can I do?Nothing can please me only thoughts are of youYou just laughed when I begged you to stayI've not stopped crying since you went awayThe world is a lonely place when you're on your ownGuess I will go home - sit down and moan.Crying and thinking is all that I doMemories I have remind me of you
Black Sabbath
We fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell. I was Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I was about to drown. However much we had to hide our love, however guarded we had to be about our pleasure, I could not long be miserable about a thing so very sweet. Nor, in my gladness, could I quite believe that anybody would be anything but happy for me if only they knew.
Sarah Waters
The best way to filter out the bad seeds was to place a job ad for Prime Minister in a national newspaper and all those that applied would be automatically disqualified.
Alex Scarrow
I am too perfect for Evening," Adam volunteers. "But that's all right." He smiles shyly at Aislin. "I am not too perfect for Aislin.
Michael Grant
Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.
John Wesley
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.
Joseph Conrad
The city centre was still crawling with Christmas shoppers looking to add to their already burgeoning piles of gifts. To Scott they were like ants at a picnic, teeming from store to store, trailing oversized carrier bags and infants behind them as they went. Scott felt alien in this environment; pulling up his hood he hurried through the crowds, dodging pushchairs, lit cigarettes and charity collection tins.
R.D. Ronald
Nobody's bought this land. And no one's going to want it either. It's dying land, lonely land.""Like me, then," I said."Yes, like you." You chewed the corner of your lip. "You both need saving.
Lucy Christopher
Incredible. Humans are such irrational creatures. So here you sit,a small space filled with demons that could tear you limb from limb as easy as pulling wings off a butterfly and you're scared of the helicopter crashing, which has a less than 2 percent chance... tell me Keira girl, what do you think the percentage is of a vampire sucking a human dry?
Stephanie Hudson
Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.  I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.
Charlotte Brontë
It is possible to escape the complexities, challenges and pace of modern life. All we have to do is close our eyes and picture a quiet world where time moves slowly.
Fennel Hudson
Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.
F.H. Bradley
The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.
Agatha Christie
She sniffed, and smiled a bit, but not too much because if there is one thing worse than someone who doesn't understand you it's someone who understands perfectly, before you've had a chance to have a good pout about not being understood.
Terry Pratchett
Harry, don't go picking a row with Malfoy, don't forget, he's a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you...""Wow, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life?" said Harry sarcastically.
J.K. Rowling
Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.
Tom Hiddleston
I write because I cannot NOT write.
Charlotte Brontë
He’s more myself than I am
Emily Brontë
Destiny' is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what's life? Consciousness without volition. We'd all be passengers, no more real than model trains.
Nick Harkaway
I know it must look odd, given that I didn't even know Emma. But it seems to me that almost no one really knew her. Everyone I speak to has a different version of what she was like.
J.P. Delaney
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
G.K. Chesterton
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn.
T.H. White
The mystery of the MAGIC BATHROOM will be revealed unto thee.
Peter Rogers
The first step towards mastering time is always to make time meaningless
Robert Aickman
Spiritual counselling is helping people find the deep root of stillness in themselves, which is also a connection to everything else.
Jay Woodman
These tears I'm wailing,I spill not without reason.Remove them, my dearest love.Take me to the place I've been dreaming of,where the grotesquely lonely meet the grotesquely lonelyand they whisper,just very softly,Please be mine, Dearest Love.
Morrissey
Perhaps a wiser eye than hers would be able to read tomorrow in tonight's stars, but where was the fun in that? It was better not to know. Better to be alive in the Here and the Now--in this bright, laughing moment--and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.
Clive Barker
War is not a means but an end. It makes violence respectable and makes sadists look like heroes.
Mary Horlock
Armour... is part of a state of mind... in which you admit the possibility... of being hit.
Joe Abercrombie
Smeagol won't grub for roots and carrotses and - taters. What's taters,precious, eh, what's taters?""Po-ta-toes!" said Sam.
J.R.R. Tolkien
In the Scotland of the early seventeenth century, an old woman living alone in Kirkcudbrightshire was accused of witchcraft and on conviction was rolled downhill in a blazing tar barrel. One of the charges against her was that she walked withershins round a well near her cottage which was used by other people. The well was afterwards known as the Witch's Well. These episodes must surely serve as cautionary tales to anyone tempted to transgress the usual custom of walking deasil round a holy well.
Colin Bord
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Realize that God uses the fires of life to purify your faith, to shape you into Christ’s image, and to cause you to love Him…even more!
Elizabeth George
And I thought, I am in love. For the first time I am in love. And loved. Someone loves me. And I love them. And within me things clicked and whirled like the insides of some gigantic clock, cog against wheel, spring against spiral, tick against tock, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. I had shown someone what I really was. I had shown someone my truth, my secret. Out there, beyond the walls of the Castle, there was a boy who had seen inside my chrysalis. And I would never be safe again.
Philip Ridley
And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.
Neil Gaiman
God first appeared on the scene of human history in the role of a matchmaker. What a profound and exciting revelation!Is it too much to suggest that Eve came to Adam on the arm of the Lord Himself in the same way that a bride today walks down the aisle of the church on her father’s arm? What human mind can fathom the depth of love and joy that filled the heart of the great Creator as He united the man and woman in this first marriage ceremony?Surely this account is one among countless indications that the Bible is not a work of merely human authorship. Moses is generally accepted as the author of the creation record. But apart from supernatural inspiration, he would never have dared to open human history with a scene of such amazing intimacy—first between God and man, and then between man and woman.
Derek Prince
As for him "feeling dead", that's probably just a consequence of him being gone from your life for so long. In some sense he no longer feels real to you.
Paula Hawkins
It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.
George Eliot
Sorry about your bad luck.
David Perry
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
G.K. Chesterton