Quotes by British Authors - Page 126

There was certainly plenty to watch and listen to. The tree which Digory had noticed was now a full-grown beech whose branches swayed gently above his head. They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. A little way off, along the river bank, willows were growing. On the other side tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose, and rhododendron closed them in.
C.S. Lewis
Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper confections, Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered,Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it
Arthur Hugh Clough
If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all that, either killing with his own hands or, by buying extravagantly, procuring people of the lower classes to kill such eccentricities as appear. ...Eccentricity, in fact, is immorality--think over it again if you do not think so now--just as eccentricity in one's way of thinking is madness (I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of either); and if a species is rare it follows that it is not Fitted to Survive. The collector is after all merely like the foot soldier in the days of heavy armour-he leaves the combatants alone and cuts the throats of those who are overthrown. So one may go through England from end to end in the summer time and see only eight or ten commonplace wild flowers, and the commoner butterflies, and a dozen or so common birds, and never be offended by any breach of the monotony.
H.G.Wells
Suddenly Damask found herself staring down at the flowers through a dazzle of tears. The words sounded so innocent and so disarming - she remembered that she hadn't wanted to come through the beautiful woods at all; and there was no danger, nothing wrong except the wickedness of her own heart. She looked at Danny's big, brown, work-scarred hands gently gathering the flowers and her love for him was a physical pain. Oh, how she loved him; how she wished that he would ask her to marry him!"Norah Lofts
Norah Lofts
Agatha surveys the garden, its rows of crinkled spring cabbages and beanstalks entwining bowers of hawthorn and hazel. The rosemary is dotted with pale blue stars of blossom and chives nod heads of tousled purple. New sage leaves sprout silver green among the brittle, frost-browned remains of last year's growth. Lily of the valley, she thinks, that will be out in the cloister garden at Saint Justina's by now.
Sarah Bower
Yorkshire had none of the color I'd known in Cape Town- the vivid pinks and purples of the freesias and arum lilies in the flower sellers' baskets. Yorkshire had none of the fragrant floral perfume, or the tang of salt in the air from the ocean.
Hazel Gaynor
They appeared to me like a thin veil of mist, translucent, almost- not quite there. But for all their misty peculiarity, they were as clear to me as the minnows in the shallows and the foxgloves on the riverbank and the butterflies fanning their wings. They flitted from flower to flower, as swift as dragonflies, sometimes glowing brightly like a candle flame suddenly catching, sometimes fading like a breath of warm air on glass, so that you would never know they had been there at all. Yet there they were. And there I was, watching them.
Hazel Gaynor
Drab and colorless as her existence would seem to have been, Mrs. Harris had always felt a craving for beauty and color and which up to this moment had manifested itself in a love for flowers....Outside the windows of her basement flat were two window boxes of geraniums, her favorite flower, and inside, wherever there was room, there was a little pot containing a geranium struggling desperately to conquer its environment, or a single hyacinth or tulip, bought from a barrow for a hard-earned shilling. Then too, the people for whom she worked would sometimes present her with the leavings of their cut flowers which in their wilted state she would take home and try to nurse back to health, and once in a while, particularly in the spring, she would buy herself a little box of pansies, primroses or anemones. As long as she had flowers Mrs. Harris had no serious complaints concerning the life she led. They were her escape from the somber stone desert in which she lived. These bright flashes of color satisfied her. They were something to return to in the evening, something to wake up to in the morning.
Paul Gallico
And that reminds me, Mama! I have just intercepted another of that puppy’s floral offerings to my sister. This billet was attached to it.” (Charles)
Georgette Heyer
On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.
C.S. Lewis
Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.
Eric Ambler
Deep down, she's a good person, Diana is," Caine said, and sighed. "Deep down, I'm not. But she is.
Michael Grant
Some people would say- you're only a drop, your word-breaking is only a drop, it wouldn't matter. But all the evil in the world's made up of little drops. It's silly talking about the unimportance of the little drops. The little drops and the ocean are the same thing.
John Fowles
Well some are born to be hanged, and some are not; and many of those who are not hanged are much worse than those who are.
Judith Flanders
Evil people relate more to the black pole. It's - this is not exact, of course, as the science of magic is as complex as the magic of electronics - it's like traveling past a mountain. The white pole is at the apex, and it is an exhilarating height, but it takes a lot of work and few missteps to ascend it. The black pole is at the nadir, and it is easy to walk downhill; sometimes you can just sit down and slide or roll and, if you fall, you can get there very fast indeed. If you don't pay attention to where you're going, you'll tend to go down, because it is the course of least resistance. Since the average person has only the vaguest notion where he is going and tends to shut out awareness of the consequence of evil, he inevitably drifts downward. There is much more space at the base of the mountain than at the peak!
Piers Anthony
You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good.
Anthony Burgess
The heresy of an age of reason. I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
Anthony Burgess
The little mutton-chopped man interrupted them to point out that in his opinion good was not the avoidance of evil, but something more positive than that: it was making the world a better place.
Neil Gaiman
[But] I fear that in the individual lives of all but a few, the balance is in debit - we do so little that is positive good, even if we negatively avoid what is actively evil.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight country where the nuances of evil and good cast their perplexing shadows.
P.D. James
Although Quirrell couldn’t fend off the dark allure of power, he did provide Harry with a lesson that guided him through the rest of his school career: there is no such thing as good and evil. We become the choices that we make.
Pottermore Limited
Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe--his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.
T.H. White
There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
Charles Dickens
People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.
Terry Pratchett
The secret island had looked mysterious enough on the night they had seen it before - but now, swimming in the hot June haze, it seemed more enchanting than ever. As they drew near to it, and saw the willow trees that bent over the water-edge and heard the sharp call of moorhens that scuttled off, the children gazed in delight. Nothing but trees and birds and little wild animals. Oh, what a secret island, all for their very own, to live on and play on.
Enid Blyton
Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.
Anthony Burgess
The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
Wilkie Collins
Everyone’s got secrets, Jem. It’s what makes people interesting.
Cat Clarke
Come with me to howling tree?""What?""Howling tree. It's a place a found. Come on
Debbie Moon
When the dog bites, when the bee stings... I simply remember I have a boyfriend and suddenly things don't seem quite so completely shit.
Sophie Kinsella
The Secret of Happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
F.H. Bradley
Let me tell you a secret, a tremendous and wonderful secret. Let me share with you something so valuable that any schoolboy would gladly trade his most treasured procession to find out what I shall tell you.
Maxwell Grantly
Sign this... and I'll show you
A.J. Hartley
Are you afraid in there?" she said softly, as the men called out for them."No," he said. "I'm not afraid. You lock me in. They won't get me."She closed the door on the little white face, turned the key in the lock. Then she slipped the key into her pocket. The lock was hidden by a pivoting device shaped like a light switch. It was impossible to see the outline of the cupboard in the paneling of the wall. Yes, he'd be safe there. She was sure of it.The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel."I'll come back for you later. I promise.
Tatiana de Rosnay
I know that you always take around because you talk so much, but I like to always know what's happening in your world.
Anna Bell
It’s like my whole life my left ring finger has been lacking something, and finally it feels complete.
Anna Bell
... it is easier to tell someone closer to you before you tell your partner.
Anna Bell
The fact that I am marrying the man of my dreams is all that matters.
Anna Bell
Instead I’ve built a house made of lies that have come crashing down around me.
Anna Bell
... secrecy adds a charm to an amour ...
Frederick Marryat
Let living and love, be one.
Peter Murphy
Biological harm from electromagnetic interference (EMI) is the dirty secret of the electrical, electronics and wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation industries.
Steven Magee
There is a common language, a mode of consciousness, almost a secret sign which can be read and recognized by all who are similarly engaged. Such realizations help fend off the feeling of isolation which can dog the steps of those who seek the Grail.
John Matthews
Always guarding one's real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquility within a thousand masks.Life itself had become a secret affair.
Mary Balogh
Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how small the effect of their medications were compared to placebos, and so did the FDA and other regulatory agencies. The companies found various ways to make the data seem more favorable to their products, and the FDA helped them keep their negative data secret. In fact, in some instances, the FDA urged the companies to keep negative data hidden, even when the companies wanted to reveal them. My colleagues and I hadn't really discovered anything new. We had merely revealed their 'dirty little secret'.
Irving Kirsch
The secret is that there is no secret.
Lionel Shriver
It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.
Tracy Chevalier
The weak makes excuses, the strong makes changes.
Habeeb Akande
The secret to living a strong life is right in front of you, calling to you every day. It can be found in your emotional reaction to specific moments in your life.
Marcus Buckingham
To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.
Samuel Johnson
I get knocked down, But I get up again, You’re never going to keep me down
CHUMBAWUMBA
Some say they stand on the shoulders of giants. True. But have they ever tried walking like one?
Jill Telford
Beat me, hurt me, fight me and I’ll bounce back, but be nice to me? I folded quicker than a banker in a high-stakes poker game.
Pippa DaCosta
Breathe in that vital connection to the life source and sensual beauty everywhere. Feel loved and strong.
Jay Woodman
He’s becoming useless. Worse than useless,” Sam said. Then, relenting, he said, “We’ll get past it.”“You mean you and Quinn?”“Yeah.”Astrid considered just keeping her mouth shut, not pushing it. But this was a talk she needed to have with Sam sooner or later. “I don’t think he’s going to get over it.”“You don’t know him that well.”“He’s jealous of you.”“Well, of course I am so terribly handsome,” Sam said, straining to make a joke of it.“He’s one kind of person, you’re another. When life is going along normally, you’re sort of the same. But when life turns strange and scary, when there’s a crisis, suddenly you’re completely different people. It’s not Quinn’s fault, really, but he’s not brave. He’s not strong. You are.
Michael Grant
The act of shopping for what he needed, and of setting up the bare necessities for himself, had lulled Strike back into the familiar soldierly state of doing what needed to be done, without question or complaint.
Robert Galbraith
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong…it is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideas.
Emma Watson
Strong people don't put others down... They lift them up.
Michael P. Watson