Quotes by British Authors - Page 181

Then it is your opinion…that a man should never-“-Invest in portable property in a friend?”… “Certainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend- and then it becomes a question how much portable property it may be worth to get rid of him.
Charles Dickens
Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.
E.M. Forster
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.
Idries Shah
Labor is a man crowning glory.""Not this man's.""I quote Marx"I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough."I quote blisters.
John Fowles
Only an atmosphere of quiet hard work and dull, serious conversation were appropriate to him.
Anthony Powell
We wanted to be accepted by our fellows, especially the influential natural leaders among us; and the ethos of my peers was – until my last year at Oundle – anti-intellectual. You had to pretend to be working less hard than you actually were. Native ability was respected; hard work was not. It was the same on the sports field. Sportsmen were admired more than scholars in any case. But if you could achieve sporting brilliance without training, so much the better. Why is native ability more admired than hard graft? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Richard Dawkins
He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spent ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air everyday.
Terry Pratchett
In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
Os Guinness
I loved buildings that had grown silently with the centuries, catching the best of each generation while time curbed the artist's pride and the philistine's vulgarity and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.
Evelyn Waugh
Christianity does NOT replace the technical. When he tells you to feed the hungry and doesn't give you lessons in cookery. If you want to learn THAT, you must go to a cook rather than a Christian.
C.S. Lewis
In reality, while we aim for excellence, we're always living on somebody's dunghill.
Jo Walton
and the best, if not heedfully used, will prove the word. The better and keener the knife is, the sooner and deeper will it cut thy fingers, if thou take not heed (647).
Richard Baxter
To have a man whose name is on the label showing such interest, commitment, and determination for the best is a wonderful thing. This is someone who will throw money at quality, who believes in being the best. Never knock it. Would you prefer to have a bean counter in corporate headquarters, someone who never comes near the brewery, making decisions solely on the basis of the bottom line and profit margins?
Charles W. Bamforth
To hate excellence is to hate the gods.
Mary Renault
Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
William Makepeace Thackeray
My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.
Charles Dickens
I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best
Winston S. Churchill
Adieu! but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart. And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
Anne Brontë
Dan didn’t want to say anything, but the words were unstoppable. “I fucking love you. Don’t leave me. You’ve got to find me.” Again, fucking tears. Vadim shook his head, then pressed his face into the crook of Dan’s shoulder, hoped to hide his weakness and felt like a man condemned to die. “I will... find you. If it’s the last thing I’ll do, I’ll come back. Nothing will stop me.
Aleksandr Voinov
It was easy to conjure him up this morning, when everything was quiet and still. A little, ginger-bearded man; she had been taller than him by half a head. She had never felt the slightest physical attraction towards him. 'What was love, after all?' thought Parminder, as a gentle breeze ruffled the tall hedge of leyland cypresses that enclosed the Jawandas’ bigback lawn. Was it love when somebody filled a space in your life that yawned inside you, once they had gone?'I did love laughing', thought Parminder. 'I really miss laughing.'And it was the memory of laughter that, at last, made the tears flow from her eyes. They trickled down her nose and into her coffee, where they made little bulletholes, swiftly erased. She was crying because she never seemed to laugh anymore (...).
J.K. Rowling
I shall have to go. But-" and here Frodo looked hard at Sam- "if you really care about me, you will have to keep that DEAD secret. See? If you don't, if you even breathe a word of what you've heard here, then I hope Gandalf will turn you into a spotted toad and fill the garden full of grass snakes." Sam fell on his knees, trembling. "Get up, Sam!" Said Gandalf. "I have thought of something better than that. Something to keep you quiet, and punish you properly for listening. You shall go away with Mr. Frodo!" "Me, sir!" cried Sam, springing up like a dog invited for a walk. "Me go and see Elves and all! Hooray!" he shouted, and then burst into tears.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Each pain is Unbearable / yet TriflingSeeing the TRUTH is Excruciating / yet ExquisiteThrough Laugher & Tears / Grinning & Fear, we face our demons.
Jay Woodman
With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! - and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
Hearing those words, I instinctively turn to my new keeper, regretting it, because for only the third time in my entire existence, tears are streaming down my cheeks.
Giselle Simlett
He didn’t mind Drake so much. Drake was a creep.It was the girl who made Orc want to cry.She was a monster. Like Orc. Begging for death. Begging for someone to let her go to her Jesus.Kill me, kill me, kill me, she begged every day and every night.Orc took a deep swig.Tears seeped from his human eyes and fell into the rocky crevices of his face.
Michael Grant
Does life teach us anything more, I wondered, than not to cry over all there is to cry about?
Howard Spring
When she came back down, Sam and Astrid had arrived.Sam hugged Dekka, and the two of them stayed that way for a long time, saying nothing. Both had loved Brianna.To Edilio, Sam said, “I’m so sorry, man. I wish I’d . . . You know what I wish.”Edilio fought back a fresh rush of tears, nodded, waited until he was sure he could speak, and said, “I’m glad you’re back, boss.
Michael Grant
Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely.
Charles Darwin
And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.
Jane Austen
And down I went to fetch my bride:But, Alice, you were ill at ease;This dress and that by turns you tried,Too fearful that you should not please.I loved you better for your fears,I knew you could not look but well;And dews, that would have fall'n in tears,I kiss'd away before they fell.
Alfred Tennyson
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
Charles Dickens
Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.
Jean Rhys
There was no point in tears outliving eyes, so she let them fall.
Sarah Winman
And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off? Or pretending? He let them fall.
J.K. Rowling
The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth.
G.K. Chesterton
The expression e=mc2 is the ultimate statement in bounce per ounce.
Nigel S. Hey
Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
Damien Hirst
Turing attended Wittgenstein's lectures on the philosophy of mathematics in Cambridge in 1939 and disagreed strongly with a line of argument that Wittgenstein was pursuing which wanted to allow contradictions to exist in mathematical systems. Wittgenstein argues that he can see why people don't like contradictions outside of mathematics but cannot see what harm they do inside mathematics. Turing is exasperated and points out that such contradictions inside mathematics will lead to disasters outside mathematics: bridges will fall down. Only if there are no applications will the consequences of contradictions be innocuous. Turing eventually gave up attending these lectures. His despair is understandable. The inclusion of just one contradiction (like 0 = 1) in an axiomatic system allows any statement about the objects in the system to be proved true (and also proved false). When Bertrand Russel pointed this out in a lecture he was once challenged by a heckler demanding that he show how the questioner could be proved to be the Pope if 2 + 2 = 5. Russel replied immediately that 'if twice 2 is 5, then 4 is 5, subtract 3; then 1 = 2. But you and the Pope are 2; therefore you and the Pope are 1'! A contradictory statement is the ultimate Trojan horse.
John D. Barrow
Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce ‘proofs’ of immortality and the existence of God. They have found fault with the proofs of their predecessors — Saint Thomas rejected Saint Anselm's proofs, and Kant rejected Descartes' — but they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deepseated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions.
Bertrand Russell
Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do.
Terry Pratchett
There were no footmarks.''Meaning that you saw none?''I assure you, sir, that there were none.''My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but I have never yet seen one which was committed by a flying creature. As long as the criminal remains upon two legs so long must there be some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacement which can be detected by the scientific searcher.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments.
W.H. Newton-Smith
Mathematics is not arithmetic. Though mathematics may have arisen from the practices of counting and measuring it really deals with logical reasoning in which theorems—general and specific statements—can be deduced from the starting assumptions. It is, perhaps, the purest and most rigorous of intellectual activities, and is often thought of as queen of the sciences.
Christopher Zeeman
Earlier fundamental work of Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Whorf, etc., as well as my own attempt to use this earlier thinking as an epistemological base for psychiatric theory, led to a series of generalizations: That human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction. These range in two directions from the seemingly simple denotative level (“The cat is on the mat”). One range or set of these more abstract levels includes those explicit or implicit messages where the subject of discourse is the language. We will call these metalinguistic (for example, “The verbal sound ‘cat’ stands for any member of such and such class of objects”, or “The word, ‘cat’ has no fur and cannot scratch”). The other set of levels of abstraction we will call metacommunicative (e.g., “My telling you where to find the cat was friendly”, or “This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers. It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially in the psychiatric interview, there occurs a further class of implicit messages about how metacommunicative messages of friendship and hostility are to be interpreted.
Gregory Bateson
A great deal of thought is only a substitute for the thoughts that the individual would really find useful at the time.
Idries Shah
At the time I thought the winner in an argument was the person who put forward the most logical support for his position. Of course, this isn't true. Human history, from gardening disputes to genocide, is full of examples of people with the most decent, well-argued stance ending up with their face in the mud in front of a naked display of power.
Mark Barrowcliffe
And intuition is what people is what people use in life to make decisions.But logic can help you work out the right answer.
Mark Haddon
Mathematics had never had more than a secondary interest for him [her husband, George Boole]; and even logic he cared for chiefly as a means of clearing the ground of doctrines imagined to be proved, by showing that the evidence on which they were supposed to give rest had no tendency to prove them.
Mary Everest Boole
I think a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art. This is best seen in the theoretical aspects of Physical Science. The mathematical theorist builds up on certain assumptions and according to well understood logical rules, step by step, a stately edifice, while his imaginative power brings out clearly the hidden relations between its parts. A well constructed theory is in some respects undoubtedly an artistic production. A fine example is the famous Kinetic Theory of Maxwell. ... The theory of relativity by Einstein, quite apart from any question of its validity, cannot but be regarded as a magnificent work of art.
Ernest Rutherford
It is one of the greatest Curses visited upon Mankind, he told me, that they shall fear where no Fear is: this astrological and superstitious Humour disarms men's Hearts, it breaks their Courage, it makes them help to bring such Calamities on themselves. Then he stopped short and looked at me, but my Measure was not yet fill'd up so I begg' d him to go on, go on. And he continued: First, they fancy that such ill Accidents must come to pass, and so they render themselves fit Subjects to be wrought upon; it is a Disgrace to the Reason and Honour of Mankind that every fantasticall Humourist can presume to interpret the Skies (here he grew Hot and put down his Dish) and to expound the Time and Seasons and Fates of Empires, assigning the Causes of Plagues and Fires to the Sins of Men or the Judgements of God. This weakens the Constancy of Humane Actions, and affects Men with Fears, Doubts, Irresolutions and Terrours.I was afraid of your Moving Picture, I said without thought, and that was why I left.It was only Clock-work, Nick.But what of the vast Machine of the World, in which Men move by Rote but in which nothing is free from Danger?Nature yields to the Froward and the Bold.It does not yield, it devours: You cannot master or manage Nature.But, Nick, our Age can at least take up the Rubbidge and lay the Foundacions: that is why we must study the principles of Nature, for they are our best Draught.No, sir, you must study the Humours and Natures of Men: they are corrupt, and therefore your best Guides to understand Corrupcion.The things of the Earth must be understood by the sentient Faculties, not by the Understanding. There was a Silence between us now until Sir Chris. says, Is your Boy in the Kitchin? I am mighty Hungry.
Peter Ackroyd
I had already established, as you know, that it was logically impossible for Kenneth to be distressed by anything that might occur between Ned and myself; but Kenneth, being an artist, has perhaps not studied logic and is unaware of the impossibility.
Sarah Caudwell
It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an "illogical" world would look like.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
[Rumsfield's] reply included a complex formulation that would become inextricably associated with him: 'There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
Ian Leslie
I hate those Socratic dialogues where everything gets drawn out at the pace of an excessively logical snail.
Jo Walton
But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Causality is a pointless superstition. These days it would take more than one book to persuade anyone of that.
Arif Ahmed
Thirty years ago, we used to ask: Can a computer simulate all processes of logic? The answer was yes, but the question was surely wrong. We should have asked: Can logic simulate all sequences of cause and effect? And the answer would have been no.
Gregory Bateson
Everybody, professors and students and Proctors the same, knew that if the sign said 'do not walk on the grass', one hopped. Anybody who didn't had failed to understand what Oxford was.
Natasha Pulley