Quotes by British Authors - Page 109

It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,’ said he. ‘Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.’‘Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction may be the greater.
Jane Austen
An inappropriate attraction to your friend’s fiancé was grounds for disbarment from the Woman Club. Neither did it make a lick of sense. He was uncouth, uneducated, uncivilized. All of their conversations back then had been unholy bicker fests where they charged from the opposite ends of the spectrum, determined not to meet in the middle but to rip pieces out of each other on the drive by.
Kate Meader
And I saw you and I thought, she'd be a cosy fit inside my arm.
Bryn Hammond
There are some people who state that the exterior, sex, or physique of another person is indifferent to them, that they care only for the communion of mind with mind; but these people need not detain us. There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believing, however often they are made.
G.K. Chesterton
It’s in our dreams that we pull people towards us.
Glenn Haybittle
I remember that feeling of skin. It'sstrange to remember touch more than thought. But my fingersstill tingle with it.
Lucy Christopher
What made him most attractive was that he was attracted to her. Another’s interest can be a powerful stimulant. She could feel his eyes on her as an almost physical pressure.
Tracy Chevalier
Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley’s attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty: he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware: to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.
Jane Austen
He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds; he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.
Virginia Woolf
We try to transform each detainee from a young man who wants to die to a young man who wants to live. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef
Robert Lacey
what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.
Charles Dickens
The [Israelis] believed - they were possessed of an absolute certainty and conviction - that 'terrorists' were in Chatila. How could I explain to them that the terrorists had left, that the terrorists had worn Israeli uniforms, that the terrorists had been sent into Chatila by Israeli officers, that the victims of the terrorists were not Israelis but Palestinians and Lebanese?
Robert Fisk
What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!
Cory Doctorow
You revolutionists' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, 'are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your action, too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be conclusive. (...) 'You are not a bit better than the forces arrayed against you -- than the police, for instance. The other day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. He looked at me very steadily. But I did not look at him. Why should I give him more than a glance ? He was thinking of many things -- of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his salary, of newspapers -- of a hundred things. But I was thinking of my perfect detonator only. He meant nothing to me. He was as insignificant as -- I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him with -- except Karl Yundt perhaps. Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolutions, legality -- counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical. He plays his little game -- so do you propagandists.
Joseph Conrad
The murky world of terrorism is more relevant than ever today: terrorist organizations, whether Bolshevik at the beginning of the twentieth century or Jihadi at the start of the twenty-first, have much in common.
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fundamentally, terrorist conflicts are about breaking the will of the enemy. To do this, one does not need to kill all of the enemy’s personnel or destroy all of its resources. One simply has to destroy the idea that ultimate victory is possible. Victory or defeat then, boils down to a question of psychology.
Andrew Silke
Kill a politician and you're tied to the motive that made you pull the trigger.
J.G. Ballard
Almost pedantically, she added: "They're not really bombs-- they're acoustic provocations.
J.G. Ballard
Invisible violence in Pakistan, violence against brown people, ongoing violence in Iraq — that's got to be quantified in the same way as the cinematic glamorous violence that happens in recognisable cities.
Russell Brand
Fear has been the original parent of superstition, every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of invisible enemies
Edward Gibbon
Counterinsurgency rests on the assumption that the enemy has significant support in the communities from which it recruits. The aim of counterinsurgency strategy is to deny the enemy any propaganda victories that can further fuel its recruitment. Insurgents must be isolated from their targeted host communities. This requires a combination of psychological, physical and economic warfare, all with the aim of undermining the insurgents’ ideological, operational and financial capabilities.From: Maajid Nawaz's article titled, 'How to Beat Islamic State', December 11th, 2015
Maajid Nawaz
We routinely and rightly condemn the terrorism that kills civilians in the name of God but we cannot claim the high moral ground if we dismiss the suffering and death of the many thousands of civilians who die in our wars as ‘collateral damage’. Ancient religious mythologies helped people to face up to the dilemma of state violence, but our current nationalist ideologies seem by contrast to promote a retreat into denial or hardening of our hearts. Nothing shows this more clearly than a remark of Madeleine Albright when she was still Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations. Later she retracted it, but among people around the world it has never been forgotten. In 1996, in CBS’s 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl asked her whether the cost of international sanctions against Iraq was justified: 'We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima … Is the price worth it?’ 'I think this is a very hard choice,’ Albright replied 'but the price, we think the price is worth it.
Karen Armstrong
Every American should own a Koran. There are no excuses. Every day you can switch on the television or the radio or open a newspaper and hear or read pronouncements about what Islam is and“what the Koran says. Most of it is wrong—very wrong. You owe it to yourself, your family, and all the Americans killed on 9/11 and since to know the truth. Do not take anyone’s word for it. Find out for yourself by reading the actual Koran. One of the most reliable and recognized versions is the The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Once you have a Koran and start to read it, take care to note the enormous differences between the half reportedly communicated to Mohammed in the beginning in Mecca, when he was weak and without followers, and the latter half, allegedly written after he returned from Medina with thousands of followers, the leader of a mighty military force. It is the post-Medina chapters of the Koran that are naturally favored by groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are not in fact perverting religious texts but skillfully applying those alleged revelations that best support their cause.
Sebastian Gorka
Our Constitution’s separation of church and state never meant that religion could have nothing to do with the governing of our nation. The Founders simply intended that the United States would not have an established state religion and that no one could be sanctioned by the state for being of the wrong faith. Separation of church and state does not mean, as many people inside government believe today, that religion can never be discussed when investigating a threat or interrogating a suspect. And it definitely does not mean that a subject under surveillance as a threat to American lives cannot be recorded or otherwise monitored when he steps into a mosque. If someone is suspected of being a terrorist, it matters not whether he steps into a mosque, a church, or a temple; he is still a threat and should be treated as such.
Sebastian Gorka
The greatest domestic terrorists in the USA are either working for the corporate government or are funding it.
Steven Magee
Never be absolutely certain that either those claiming to be the terrorists, ot those accused of committing an act of terrorism, were the perpetrators. The only absolute certainties are forever victims.
Richard Bunning
The Obama administration has a strange theory. Terrorism is a response of uneducated human beings who have been disenfranchised politically and economically. If we can solve the ‘root grievances’ of the poor and oppressed around the world, there will be no more terrorists, and Americans will be safe. This view is of course absurd. If poverty, lack of education, and political disenfranchisement were the causes of terrorism, then much of India and most of China would be populated by terrorists. But they are not. And this is because terrorism is the violent expression of ideology, not objective conditions—what has famously been called ‘propaganda of the deed.’ The terrorist’s ideology may be secular and political—communist or fascist, for example—or it may be religious—Christian, Islamic, or even Hindu.
Sebastian Gorka
You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy Since the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice—under both Republican and Democratic presidents—have distorted our analysis of the enemy, preventing us from drawing an effective plan to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Obama administration, blinded by its own preconceived ideas of why terrorism occurs, is influenced by malevolent actors who have an interest in censoring any talk of the religious aspects of the enemy’s ideology. At the highest level of the U.S. government, terrorism is deemed to be the result of poverty, unemployment, and lack of political enfranchisement. This fallacy must be jettisoned. We are not at war with Islam. The people most immanently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They are on the most important front of this war, and they understand just how much religion truly matters. We do a great disservice to those brave Muslims when we try to convince the world that the threat will disappear if enough people have good jobs and sound educations.
Sebastian Gorka
The similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored. Both groups are driven by a totalitarian vision. The followers of Karl Marx envisioned a world transformed into a workers’ paradise in which all other classes had been destroyed and only one party, the Communist Party, was in control. Today’s jihadists also have a universal vision. They look forward to a global caliphate in which all have submitted to the will of Allah and live as Muslims, the infidels and apostates having been slain. Both visions are exclusive, absolutist, and totalitarian. They are predicated on a ‘them or us’ vision of how the world must be. There is no possibility for peaceful coexistence with the ‘other'.
Sebastian Gorka
Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue', and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak — the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths" — and the policeman lowered his voice — "in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.
G.K. Chesterton
I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high.
Christopher Hitchens
Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.
Christopher Hitchens
[T]his is an enemy for life, as well as an enemy of life.
Christopher Hitchens
Your job is to do your job with all your heart to the best of your ability. Life will go it’s own merry way at it’s own pace. But if you do then you – and life – will be the richer for you being here.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?
Cory Doctorow
work hard. play hard. be kind.
Harry Styles
lose weight, eat backwards.
Benny Bellamacina
carve your name on hearts and not on marble.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Bad habit, lunch. A banana and a water biscuit is all any sane healthy man should need in the middle of the day.
Agatha Christie
Leaving the rat race is easy. All you have to do is quit your job, sell your house, and go and live in a tent in the middle of nowhere. It’s staying out of the rat race that’s tricky.
Fennel Hudson
I like to start slowly, and then ease up as the day progresses.
Fennel Hudson
Status: the perpetual carrot that entices us from the front and prods us in the back.
Fennel Hudson
It was easy to make a difference to other people’s lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life.
Alexander McCall Smith
Savour a slow-paced contented life.
Fennel Hudson
I wish for a simple life.
Fennel Hudson
We will never know true bliss while our lifestyles are reliant on the misery and suffering of others.
Mango Wodzak
Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated." "Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing." The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient.
Charlotte Brontë
His broken heart was unfeeling, like shattered glass in an acid bath.
Pete Townshend
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,And even Despair was powerless to destroy,Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy;Then did I check the tears of useless passion,Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;Sternly denied its burning wish to hastenDown to that tomb already more than mine!And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,How could I seek the empty world again?
Emily Brontë
It isn't very pretty to have been made a fool of by one's own feelings,' he said. 'To take childish promises and build a--a castle out of them...
Winston Graham
The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.
Charles Dickens
I realize that it's not that difficult to remember what people like, especially when you care about them.
Anna Bell
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:Even as a broken mirror, which the glassIn every fragment multiplies; and makesA thousand images of one that was,The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold, And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,Yet withers on till all without is old,Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.
George Gordon Byron
I must have truly been under his spell, believing anything is acceptable when you're in love.
Anna Bell
Bucket lists are supposed to be about doing things you've always dreamt about not torturing yourself.
Anna Bell
There are plenty of other ways to mend a broken heart, and doing some list full of stuff that you don't want to do doesn't have to be one of them.
Anna Bell
And yet you thought he was the one? Imagine a lifetime without laughter.
Anna Bell
Is that what you meant when you said the more you love a person the harder your heart breaks?
Anna Bell
You are my heart. Even if you are a broken heart
Philippa Gregory
I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.
Kazuo Ishiguro