Quotes by British Authors

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
Max Beerbohm
Never have a friend that's poorer than yourself.
Douglas Jerrold
I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.
Christopher Hitchens
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
C.S. Lewis
Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
Tahir Shah
We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.
Mark Lawrence
A few years after working on Mauna Kea, I discovered that I had radiation sickness
Steven Magee
How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?
Alexander McCall Smith
Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.
George Orwell
In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me.And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Take notice of those intuitive whispers from the heart, they represent your true desires.
Steven Redhead
'You must've been waiting for someone like me to come along,' I said. I meant, because of the big bed. But Larry looked at me all funny and said, 'Yes, I think I was.'
J.L. Merrow
We designate the spirit of the well as 'she' because in most of her personifications she takes a female form, though not invariably. She appears in many guises - ghost, witch, saint, mermaid, fairy, and sometimes in animal form, often as a sacred fish - and her presence permeates well lore, and indeed water lore generally.
Colin Bord
If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.
Jeremy Bentham
She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.
Elias Canetti
Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled.
Charles Mackay
Cookbooks, it should be stressed, do not belong in the kitchen at all. We keep them there for the sake of appearances; occasionally, we smear their pages together with vibrant green glazes or crimson compotes, in order to delude ourselves, and any passing browsers, that we are practicing cooks; but in all honesty, a cookbook is something you read in the living room, or in the bathroom, or in bed.
Anthony Lane
[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.
Christopher Hitchens
To exist, the triangle demands three complementary elements: love, power and danger. Mixed incautiously, these elements, like those in physics, are volatile and potentially explosive.
Ruth Harris
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Not upholding a persons legal rights is a form of abuse. Unfortunately, USA government abuse of the general public is a normal state of affairs in many areas.
Steven Magee
In a capitalist society there are always inequalities of class and wealth. People who inherit money and property will always see themselves as being superior to those who have to work for it.
Sally Wentworth
While doubt cannot be expelled, it can be subdued.
Richard Baxter
We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.
William Herschel
Hannah ran past, beaming. I remember that feeling--when you're a kid and it's your birthday and for one day everyone makes you feel like the most special person in the world.
Jojo Moyes
Sometimes I think it is because we remember when we could smoke in pubs, and that we pull our phones out together as once we pulled out our cigarette packets. But probably it’s because we are easily bored.
Neil Gaiman
Westward on the high-hilled plainsWhere for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veinsFrets the changeless blood of man....There, when hueless is the westAnd the darkness hushes wide,Where the lad lies down to restStands the troubled dream beside.There, on thoughts that once were mine,Day looks down the eastern steep,And the youth at morning shineMakes the vow he will not keep.
A.E. Housman
How can life end in the middle of the story? Because life always does.
Linda Grant
When people query whether Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) is real or not, my answer is always: Sweden has recognized the condition for a decade and has approximately 300,000 EHS people.
Steven Magee
The devil is a bad devil.
Pedro Okoro
She didn't want to forget how deeply she had loved him, how important it had been to her; she felt as if to discard the memory would be a betrayal of her younger self.
Harriet Evans
If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were educated. But a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.
C.S. Lewis
Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn’t pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts.
Stephen Fry
Up the still, glistening beaches,Up the creeks we will hie,Over banks of bright seaweedThe ebb-tide leaves dry.We will gaze, from the sand-hills,At the white, sleeping town;At the church on the hill-side—And then come back down.Singing: "There dwells a loved one,But cruel is she!She left lonely for everThe kings of the sea.(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman')
Matthew Arnold
Do You BelieveDo you believethat I have loved yousince the dawn of time?Do you believethat we were destinedto be intertwined?...
Muse
Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, the total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, too easily.
Oliver Sacks
Electricity should not be banned, it just needs much better government regulation and understanding by the medical profession of the full range of toxicity that it presents to the human.
Steven Magee
Often the best advice is not to seek advice.
Habeeb Akande
Wisdom comes through suffering or old age.
Lesley Pearse
You may possibly become rich by just caring about yourself and what you want to gain from your profession and your life but you cannot possibly enrich the lives of everyone you meet that way.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
True kindness ennobles the giver
Jocelyn Murray
Maths is at only one remove from magic.
Neel Burton
But don’t ever let me hear those words leave those beautifully pink lips of yours.” He warned her playfully. “Evo’s just fine.
L.J. Sealey
The possibilities were endless. Battles would be fought. Wonders revealed. Many journeys. Many lands. Many joys. Many sorrows.But stories all...
William Joyce
The parrot had a range of phrases. His own name ('Niko, Niko'), the name of his original owner and now 'Stavros'. Occasionally he would also say 'Panagia mou', which could be an expression of piety but also a gentle expletive, depending on how it was said. With the parrot it was hard to tell. It did not sound pious.
Victoria Hislop
You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it.
Neil Gaiman
The humanitarian philosophies that have been developed (sometimes under some religious banner and invariably in the face of religious opposition) are human inventions, as the name implies - and our species deserves the credit. I am a devout atheist - nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator. However I can see that the promise of infinite immortality is a more palatable proposition than the absolute certainty of finite mortality which those of us who are subject to free thought (as opposed to free will) have to look forward to and many may not have the strength of character to accept it.Thus I am a supporter of Amnesty International, a humanist and an atheist. I believe in a secular, democratic society in which women and men have total equality, and individuals can pursue their lives as they wish, free of constraints - religious or otherwise. I feel that the difficult ethical and social problems which invariably arise must be solved, as best they can, by discussion and am opposed to the crude simplistic application of dogmatic rules invented in past millennia and ascribed to a plethora of mystical creators - or the latest invention; a single creator masquerading under a plethora of pseudonyms. Organisations which seek political influence by co-ordinated effort disturb me and thus I believe religious and related pressure groups which operate in this way are acting antidemocratically and should play no part in politics. I also have problems with those who preach racist and related ideologies which seem almost indistinguishable from nationalism, patriotism and religious conviction.
Harry W. Kroto
...unquestioning automatonsblindly marching to the beat -an eerie crunching soundhoards of shuffling feet...(from silent moments)
Muse
I dislike Tolkien, another Oxonian Old Norse obsessive, with his war games and made-up language in a world without women.
Sarah Moss
Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke out as brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us…
Wilkie Collins
A thin man can squeeze into a fat body, yet you can only squeeze a fat man to become thin
Benny Bellamacina
After a decade of working in high altitude astronomy the medical profession discovered that I had a hole in my heart, erratic low blood oxygen levels and brain issues. Heart, lung and brain problems appear to be long term known adverse health aspects of high altitude work and unnatural electromagnetic radiation exposures.
Steven Magee
When you give a present,you're giving with your heart.Never give thinking of money,or your gift will fall apart.
Anthony T.Hincks
I was wasting my life, always thinking about myself.
Morrissey
Give me loveGive me loveGive me peace on earthGive me lightGive me lifeKeep me free from birthGive me hopeHelp me cope, with this heavy loadTrying to, touch and reach you with,heart and soul
George Harrison
You didn't make me responsible. You don't have that power. This"—he held up his hands, and light glowed from his palms—"this made me responsible. Having power made me responsible. I had the power and you had the brains. So we were chosen. That's the way it works, isn't it? People who can have to help those who can't. The strong defend the weak from the strong. I don't think you invented that, Astrid; all you did was make me see it. Well, I see it. There it is. The FAYZ gave me this light, and the FAYZ made it necessary. And now the light isn't helping, is it? Now that monster is going to walk into town and kill people I care about and people I love. (Chapter Twenty-Six | 2 Hours, 56 Minutes)
Michael Grant
The educated man, habitually, almost without noticing it, sees the present as something that grows out of a long perspective of centuries. In my the minds of my RAF hearers this perspective simply did not exist. It seemed to me that they did not really believe that we have any reliable knowledge of historic man. But this was often curiously combined with a conviction that we knew a great deal about Prehistoric Man: doubtless because Prehistoric Man is labelled "Science" (which is reliable) whereas Napoleon or Julius Caesar is labelled as "History" (which is not.
C.S. Lewis
At the age of 46 I was starting to see the appearance of rainbow halos and starbursts around bright nighttime lights, problems reading small print, focusing issues with my eyes, and image recognition issues. I had been exposed to bright high powered 20 watt scattered sodium LASER light a decade earlier in very high altitude astronomy.
Steven Magee
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
The immense success of our life, is I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it.
Virginia Woolf