Quotes by British Authors - Page 142

There were ten tongues within one head, and one went out to fetch some bread, to feed the living and the dead." "What does it mean?" "A wren made a nest inside the skull of a gibbeted corpse, flying in and out of the jaw to feed its young. In the midst of death, as it were, life just keeps on happening.
Neil Gaiman
The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal endings.
Anthony Powell
Up the coast a few miles north, in a lava reef under the cliffs, there are a lot of rock pools. You can visit them when the tide is out. Each pool is separate and different, and you can, if you are fanciful, give them names - such as George, Charlotte, Kenny, Mrs Strunk. Just as George and the others are thought of, for convenience, as individual entities, so you may think of a rock pool as an entity: though, of course, it is not. The waters of its consciousness - so to speak - are swarming with hunted anxieties, grim-jawed greeds, dartingly vivid intuitions, old crusty-shelled rock-gripping obstinancies, deep-down sparkling undiscovered secrets, ominous protean organisms motioning mysteriously, perhaps warningly, toward the surface light. How can such a variety of creatures coexist at all? Because they have to. The rocks of the pool hold their world together. And, throughout the day of the ebb tide, they know no other.But that long day ends at last; yields to the night-time of the flood. And, just as the waters of the ocean come flooding, darkening over the pools, so over George and the others in sleep come the waters of that other ocean; that consciousness which is no one in particular but which contains everyone and everything, past, present, and future, and extends unbroken beyond the uttermost stars. We may surely suppose that, in the darkness of the full flood, some of these creatures are lifted from their pools to drift far out over the deep waters. But do they ever bring back, when the daytime of the ebb returns, any kind of catch with them? Can they tell us, in any manner, about their journey? Is there, indeed, anything for them to tell - except that the waters of the ocean are not really other than the waters of the pool?
Christopher Isherwood
I know, for example, that Mr. Petersen did not experience the flow of time in the same way that I did during those last sixteen months. He told me often, particularly towards the end, that for him time had become a slow, peaceful drift. If I had to guess why this was the case, I'd say that maybe it was because this was time he never expected to have. Or maybe it was more than he was now letting time drift. There was a certain type of contentment in his outlook, which never strayed too far into the future. His life had become simple and uncluttered, and when you're living like that, I think time can seem to stretch out for ever. Matters only change when you start fretting about all the things you need to get done. The more stuff you try to force into it, the less accommodating time becomes.
Gavin Extence
Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and see and earth.
James Clavell
You're still alive. That means you're winning.
Rachel Cotterill
It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.
Virginia Woolf
Everything Dies. That is the law of life-the bitter unchangeable law
David Clement-Davies
He'd been a shy, quiet, bookish kid, and that had been painful; now he was a big dumb guy, and nobody expected him to be able to do anything more than move a sofa into the next room on his own.
Neil Gaiman
O prejudice, prejudice, prejudice, how many hast thou destroyed! Men who might have been wise have remained fools because they thought they were wise. Many judge what the gospel ought to be, but do not actually enquire as to what it is. They do not come to the Bible to obtain their views of religion, but they open that Book to find texts to suit the opinions which they bring to it. They are not open to the honest force of truth, and therefore are not saved by it.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
People cannot handle prejudice because they try to deal with the symptom. Prejudice is the symptom, wrong assumptions are the cause.'Prejudice is the daughter of assumption.
Idries Shah
We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
It also appears to me that when prejudices persist obstinately, it is the fault of nobody so much as of those who make a point of proclaiming them insuperable, as an excuse to themselves for never joining in an attempt to remove them. Any prejudice whatever will be insurmountable if those who do not share it themselves truckle to it, and flatter it, and accept it as a law of nature.
John Stuart Mill
It is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.
Lord Paulmerston
In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.
Malcolm Gladwell
Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.
Aleister Crowley
Their faces were clay-coloured and featureless, yet not stupid; they might have been shrewd turnips.
Rebecca West
He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from; that he smelled of curry; had no sexual identity; took other people’s jobs; or had no job and bummed off the state; or gave all the jobs to his relatives; that he could be a dentist or a shop-owner or a curry-shifter, but not a footballer or a filmmaker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshiped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered.
Zadie Smith
A total stranger, and one not of one's sex, is often the least prejudiced judge.
John Fowles
Prejudice is a belief born from a shortcut to thinking
Steven Aitchison
I suspect that in this comprehensive and (may I say) commonplace censure, you are not judging from yourself, but from prejudiced persons, whose opinions you have been in the habit of hearing. It is impossible that your own observation can have given you much knowledge of the clergy. You can have been personally acquainted with very few of a set of men you condemn so conclusively.
Jane Austen
Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.
Jane Austen
It is impossible to read through the reports in the Communist Press without realizing that they are consciously aimed at a public ignorant of the facts and have no other purpose than to work up prejudice.
George Orwell
...I applied her rule to my life; after all, we are all searching for them, the rules. We pick them up from the strangest places, and if they appear to work once we can live a whole lifetime by them, regardless of the unhappiness and difficulty they may later bring.
Rachel Joyce
You are blinded,” said Dumbledore, his voice rising now, the aura of power around him palpable, his eyes blazing once more, “by the love of the office you hold, Cornelius! You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow up to be!
J.K. Rowling
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
Sorry, folks, but the maximum occupancy is seventy-five,” Albert said. Then he spotted Jack. “Jack, how’s it going?”“What? Oh, fine.” Jack was confused as to how to proceed. He didn’t want to wait in line if Brianna wasn’t even inside.“You look like a man with a question,” Albert prompted.“Well, I’m kind of looking for Brianna. We had this…it’s a…tech thing. You wouldn’t understand.”“Breeze is already inside.”One of the kids in the line said, “Of course she is, she’s a freak. They always get in.”A second kid nodded. “Yeah, the freaks don’t wait in lines. Bet she didn’t have to pay, either.”Albert said, “Hey, she got here a little before you guys did and she waited. And she paid.” Then to Jack. “Go ahead in.”“See?” the first kid crowed. “He’s one, too.”“Dude, he set up my sound system,” Albert said. “What have you done for me other than stand here and bust on me?
Michael Grant
Imagine you’re diagnosed with epilepsy: what would you think if you weren’t referred to a specialist but taken to a psychiatrist to treat you for your ‘false illness beliefs’?This is what happens to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) patients in the UK. They are told to ignore their symptoms, view themselves as healthy, and increase their exercise. The NHS guidelines amalgamate ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, assuming symptoms are caused by deconditioning and ‘exercise phobia’. Sufferers are offered Graded Exercise to increase fitness, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to rid them of their ‘false illness beliefs’.
Tanya Marlow
...but prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle — solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness.
George Eliot
The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.
Alexander Hamilton
Thinking? You're not thinking. You're reasoning without reasons, and that's just another word for prejudice.
Anthony McGowan
As she grew older, Maddy discovered that she had disappointed almost everyone. An awkward girl with a sullen mouth, a curtain of hair, and a tendency to slouch, she had neither Mae's sweet nature nor sweet face. Her eyes were rather beautiful, but few people ever noticed this, and it was widely believed Maddy was ugly, a troublemaker, too clever for her own good, too stubborn - or too slack - to change.Of course, folk agreed that it was not her fault she was so brown or her sister so pretty, but a smile costs nothing, as the saying goes, and if only the girl had made an effort once in a while, or even showed a little gratitude for all the help and free advice, then maybe she would have settled down.
Joanne Harris
I won't be a slave to the past. I'll love where I choose.
Thomas Hardy
I found it hard work now to pray to God, because despair was swallowing me up
John Bunyan
I beseech you, little brothers, that you be as wise as brother Daisy and brother dandelion; for never do they lie awake thinking of tomorrow, yet they have gold crowns like kings and emperors or like Charlemagne in all his glory.
G.K. Chesterton
A rose lay open in full bloomand, looking from my garden room,I watched the sun-baked flower fill with rain.It seemed so fragile,resting there,and such a silence filled the air,the beauty of the moment caused me pain."What more?" I thought. "There must be more."As if in answer then, I sawone weighty drop that caused my rose to fall.It trembled, then cascaded downto earth just staining gentle brownand, since then, I've felt different.That's all.
Julie Andrews Edwards
I'm miles from where you areI lay down on the cold groundAnd I, I pray that something picks me upAnd sets me down in your warm arms.
Snow Patrol
Love the moment for its simplicity, it may give or take nothing from you, but in the blinking of an eye it will have change so many things forever.
Steven Redhead
There is a level of consciousness between sleeping and fully wakening when the worries of the day have not settled upon us; the body is stilled, and the senses wholly receptive. If the sun is bright, there is pure silence, or the birds are beginning to sing, this shining level of consciousness can come to be the nearest we will get to paradise this side of our quietus, Every day should begin so, This is no dream. This is the reality. The world outside is beautiful. We do our best to hide it. We cover it. We push it father back. The ugliness we make ourselves. We originate our own worries. We put on our own shackles; build our prisons. We can only glimpse the golden reality, briefly, through our tiny barred windows.
John Wyatt
The way towards simplicity is through outrage.
William Golding
Why use long words when short ones will do? Not all readers have been to college or university.
Ken Scott
A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)
T.S Eliot
Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.
Charles Lamb
[The] structural theory is of extreme simplicity. It assumes that the molecule is held together by links between one atom and the next: that every kind of atom can form a definite small number of such links: that these can be single, double or triple: that the groups may take up any position possible by rotation round the line of a single but not round that of a double link: finally that with all the elements of the first short period [of the periodic table], and with many others as well, the angles between the valencies are approximately those formed by joining the centre of a regular tetrahedron to its angular points. No assumption whatever is made as to the mechanism of the linkage. Through the whole development of organic chemistry this theory has always proved capable of providing a different structure for every different compound that can be isolated. Among the hundreds of thousands of known substances, there are never more isomeric forms than the theory permits.
Nevil Vincent Sidgwick
We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who tell us the time, strangers who remark on the weather, beggars, waiters, and telegraph-boys--instead of this bewildering human swarm which passes us every day, fiction asks us to follow one figure (say the postman) consistently through his ecstasies and agonies. That is what makes one impatient with that type of pessimistic rebel who is always complaining of the narrowness of his life and demanding a larger sphere. Life is too large for us as it is: we have all too many things to attend to. All true romance is an attempt to simplify it, to cut it down to plainer and more pictorial proportions. What dullness there is in our life arises mostly from its rapidity; people pass us too quickly to show us their interesting side. By the end of the week we have talked to a hundred bores; whereas, if we had stuck to one of them, we might have found ourselves talking to a new friend, or a humorist, or a murderer, or a man who had seen a ghost.
G.K. Chesterton
Sounds simple, doesn’t it, this notion of simplicity? Simple things done simply by a simple person. But it’s not as simple as it seems.
Fennel Hudson
Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. 'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects.
David Byrne
...it's really more intelligent to be able to simplify things than to complicate them. Even if some people think it makes you look stupid.
Eugenia Cheng
Life always refused simplicity.
Julian Barnes
There's no seduction any more, diary. No subtlety. No tidy-yourself-up in this world. No need for personal pride. There's just the things you're prepared to do - for survival, for fulfillment, for whatever-the-hell-it-is you really need - and the things you're not.
Simon Spurrier
Do you understand what’s going on here?”Hodgesaargh took another slow look at the scene. “No,” he said.“In that case’s not my job to understand this sort of thing,” said the falconer. “I wasn’t trained. Probably takes a lot of training, understanding this. That’s your job. And her job. Can you understand what’s going on when a bird’s been trained and’ll make a kill and still came back to the wrist?”“Well, no—”“There you are, then. So that’s all right. Cup of tea, was it?
Terry Pratchett
Simplicity within itself is just another complication.
Anthony T.Hincks
Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.
George Eliot
Truth, simplicity and love. These are the three main aspects of Eden Fruitarianism which the acolyte seeks to embrace, expand and better understand.
Mango Wodzak
I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favour of doing it.
Henry James
What’s the most difficult thing you can do? Live simply. ‘Cause in order to be self-sufficient, you got to get well near everybody else to work for you.
M.C. Humphreys
Conse­quently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.
E.M. Forster
Barriers were being torn down. Where Freddie Mercury was trying to keep his homosexuality from the front pages, Boy George was openly & outrageously gay.
Pete Townshend
Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one's sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood.
Pete Townshend