Quotes by British Authors - Page 99

Strange how the perspective changes with the point of view, isn’t it? Most people who claim to believe in the Bible don’t actually know what it says
Karl Wiggins
Honour was like a coat: sometimes one did not have time to put it on.
Adrian Tchaikovsky
I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.
Charles Dickens
…It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. Now he had to lay hold of them again and believe that they were important, at least to himself. He doubted whether he would ever again believe them important to other people.
P.D. James
I had started to desire power, because what I now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage.
Rachel Cusk
Over the last few years, my comfort level with how I look has improved. My age has helped. You get used to yourself and accept yourself.
Lynn Redgrave
How initially 'to get her in the sack' and subsequently to avoid 'her giving you the sack' are not identical dilemmas faced by the male species, but they sure have a bizarre habit of being bedfellows
Alex Morritt
You will be interested to hear, Hilary, that it [the drug] had a most remarkable effect — even on Selena after a very modest quantity. She cast off all conventional restraints and devoted herself without shame to the pleasure of the moment." I asked for particulars of this uncharacteristic conduct. "She took from her handbag a paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice and sat on the sofa reading it, declining all offers of conversation.
Sarah Caudwell
I look away so that my eyes don't betray the hurt I feel
Adele Parks
Of course, if we do find the Great Glom, we will see other gloms as well," said Dottia. "I mean, he will not exist alone, will he? Mythic creatures like him are often spoken of as if they did exist alone, and they were born unique, hatched from a singular egg, out of nowhere, with no parents, mate or offspring. He will have a female glom as his wife, his own glom children, and an entire race of gloms as his subjects." "Certainly, he will, I agree," said Klubbe.
Philip Dodd
Before that no one thought of us as colored-foreign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored.
Neil Gaiman
The thing is, I mean, there’s times when you look at the universe and you think, “What about me?” and you can just hear the universe replying, “Well, what about you?”
Terry Pratchett
At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.
Tabitha Suzuma
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
One particular aspect of Siddhartha’s revelation of the outside world has always struck me. Quite possibly he lived his first thirty years without any knowledge of number. How must he have felt, then, to see crowds of people mingling in the streets? Before that day he would not have believed that so many people existed in all the world. And what wonder it must have been to discover flocks of birds, and piles of stones, leaves on trees and blades of grass! To suddenly realise that, his whole life long, he had been kept at arm’s length from multiplicity.
Daniel Tammet
I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,' said Diana, 'during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you - he will make it up.'I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him - he stood at the foot of the stairs.
Charlotte Brontë
I can ask for cigarettes in every language
David Bowie
For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday
Evelyn Underhill
My own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Real friends don't leave those who shout and scream, they just stand back and leave them until they are ready to calm down...
Kristina Howells
Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.
T.H. White
You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza."That brought a smile to the corner of her mouth. The corner he couldn't see. "Well. Facts are facts.
Joe Abercrombie
We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.
Rudyard Kipling
I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl.
Roald Dahl
A DEAD STATESMANI could not dig: I dared not rob:Therefore I lied to please the mob.Now all my lies are proved untrueAnd I must face the men I slew.What tale shall serve me here amongMine angry and defrauded young?from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18
Rudyard Kipling
Max, for some people there are no victories, just alternate forms of losing.
David Niven
We look back to times past, and we mass them together, and say in such a year such and such events took place, such wars occupied that year, and during the next there was peace. Yet each year was then divided into weeks, days, minute, and slow-moving seconds, during which there were human minds to note and distinguish them, as now.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid
J.K. Rowling
Men are pigs, darling. I really have every sympathy for women that they actually have to choose one of these arrogant, stupid morons to settle down with and marry.
Michael Winner
Our lives are spent sailing in the mist, hoping for a burst of sunlight that can make sense of who we are.
David Gemmell
It’s better to be individual than a clone of someone else.
Fennel Hudson
My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.
J.M.W. Turner
The Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte had been banished to the island of Elba. However His Imperial Majesty had some doubts wheter a quiet island life would suit him - he was, after all, accustomed to governing a large proportion of the known world.
Susanna Clarke
..it must make sense to try & sign up the minister's man, who in the end is the one person who can ensure that you will be awarded the contract. The system seems to work well, & as long as a minister deals only with reputable international firms & doesn't become too greedy, no one complains. Fail to observe either of those two golden rules & the whole house of cards collapses.
Jeffrey Archer
No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled. "Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?""What?""Oh, you'd like something simpler?
Terry Pratchett
I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
C.S. Lewis
Andy was receptive, like a deep vessel into which life was poured. If this terrible particular thing hadn't been poured into her, she would have been happier--it goes without saying--but less of a person. She was filled out by her fate. I actually think that this is quite rare, the capacity to become the whole shape of the accidents that happen to you.
Tessa Hadley
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
Agatha Christie
The beauty of artifacts is in how they reassure us we’renot the first to die.
Simon Van Booy
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
Dean William R. Inge
When I was young I used to have this nightmare about dying. I used to lie awake at night screaming. All my schoolfriends went to heaven or hell, and I was sent to Southend.
Douglas Adams
I urge the general public to be wary of the police on the grounds of health and safety.
Steven Magee
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.
Neil Gaiman
Life's not that simple. Not so easy to move on when the anger you've got is what keeps you going.
Rachel Ward
I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure.
Hanif Kureishi
He could not afford to indulge misery, to live in the past and stumble through life facing backwards.
Jonathan Renshaw
All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius.
P.D. James
The one prejudice it had proved hardest to root out of a society was the one towards people whose social skills were limited.
Alex Lamb
Who upholds the gorsedd if not You? Who counts the ages of the world if not You? Who commands the Wheel of Heaven if not You? Who quickens life in the womb if not You? Therefore, God of All Virtue and Power, sain us and shield us with Your Swift Sure Hand.
Stephen R. Lawhead
An' I learned about women from 'er.
Rudyard Kipling
By the middle of Henry VIII's reign, the white meats — that is, dairy products — were considered common fare and people from all classes would eat meat whenever they could get it.
Clarissa Dickson Wright
A clown needn't be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he's in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they're just being ordinary men, they've got quite sad faces.
Enid Blyton
There is a magic in distance. Look back at the golden lamp-lit rooms of your home from the road of your life, and it all for a moment is exactly how you hoped it would be: warm, peaceful, safe.
Kate Lord Brown
Yeah 'ear 'ear," said George, with half a glance at Fred, the corner of whose mouth twitched.
J.K. Rowling
What do you think dignity's all about?'The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Yet perhaps even this view falls short of the truth. It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather, God is the only good of all creatures: and by necessity each must find its good in that kind and degree of the fruition of God which is proper to its nature. The kind and degree may vary with the creature's nature: but that there ever could be any other good is an atheistic dream. ... George Macdonald... represents God as saying to men, 'You must be strong with my strength and blessed with my blessedness for I have no other to give you.' That is the whole conclusion of the matter. God gives what He has, not what He has not: He gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. To be God - to be like God and to share His goodness in creaturely response - to be miserable - these are the only three alternatives. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows - the only food that any possible universe can ever grow - then we must starve eternally.
C.S. Lewis
He's satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can't be satisfied.
Graham Greene
Jesus was crucified for doing nothingAnd God is worshiped for even less.
Porcupine Tree
I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.
Graham Greene
How does one become butterfly?' Pooh asked pensively.'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,' Piglet replied.'You mean to die?' asked Pooh.'Yes and now,' he answered. 'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will live on.
A.A. Milne