Quotes by British Authors - Page 184

Eccentricity may be diverting, Mama, but it is out of place in a wife: certainly in my wife!
Georgette Heyer
Be realistic with your expectations. I'd really like to cuddle a unicorn, but it aint going to happen.
India Knight
No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.
Jude Morgan
I am afraid I shall disappoint people's expectations dreadfully.
Jude Morgan
Unhappiness lies in that gap between our talents and our expectations.
Sebastian Horsley
You see what you expect to see, Severus.
J.K. Rowling
It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?
Douglas Adams
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Samuel Johnson
Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.
Lionel Shriver
...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
David Mitchell
In accepting and defending the social institution of slavery, the Greeks were harder-hearted than we but clearer-headed; they knew that labor as such is slavery, and that no man can feel a personal pride in being a laborer. A man can be proud of being a worker – someone, that is, who fabricates enduring objects, but in our society, the process of fabrication has been so rationalized in the interests of speed, economy and quantity that the part played by the individual factory employee has become too small for it to be meaningful to him as work, and practically all workers have been reduced to laborers. It is only natural, therefore, that the arts which cannot be rationalized in this way – the artist still remains personally responsible for what he makes – should fascinate those who, because they have no marked talent, are afraid, with good reason, that all they have to look forward to is a lifetime of meaningless labor. This fascination is not due to the nature of art itself, but to the way in which an artists works; he, and in our age, almost nobody else, is his own master. The idea of being one’s own master appeals to most human beings, and this is apt to lead to the fantastic hope that the capacity for artistic creation is universal, something nearly all human beings, by virtue, not by some special talent, but due to their humanity, could do if they tried.
W.H. Auden
George, I know you’re tired. But President Lincoln, he didn’t free us to be lazy and no good. He freed us to work hard and improve ourselves.”-George’s Grandmother.
George Dawson
To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.
Idries Shah
Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane “experiences” which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That’s not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.
Tom Hodgkinson
I am grateful, and would thank the Gods(if there were any to thank) that I have finally mastered this art of forgetting--of murdering the memory.
Caryl Phillips
One could call a master a good master because he did not whip his slaves, but ultimately he was still and owner of men, and men were not made to be owned.
Nick Lake
You Say To People 'Throw Off Your Chains' And They Make New Chains For Themselves?
Terry Pratchett
The light on her face was a lesson, a book that she hoped he would want to read, but he looked away from her...she did not want this man to leave her alone. He was kind. And she feared the loneliness of dreaming
Caryl Phillips
I know of no evil that ever existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons every year from their own land.
William Pitt the Younger
...A vision from a universe where the Equal Rights Amendment--with its redefinition of personhood--is rejected by the house of deputies: A universe where to die is to become property and to be created outwith a gift of parental DNA is to be doomed to slavery.
Charles Stross
Career is just posh slavery.
Tom Hodgkinson
It should be held as an eternal truth, that what is morally wrong can never be politically right.
Hannah More
Animal welfarism is a blatant lie. Anyone who truly cares for the welfare of another, would never dream of exploiting them. For just as when slavery is deeply set into the psyche of a nation, those crying for slave welfare and not abolitionism, argue in favour of slavery and exploitation, and thus push eventual abolitionism further into the future.
Mango Wodzak
Writer Brigid Brophy exposes [their motives] with great precision:"Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. These slogans have a long history. After being used to justify slave traders, ruthless industrialists, and contractors who had found that the most economically 'realistic' method of cleaning a chimney was to force a small child to climb it, they have now been passed on, like an heirloom, to the factory farmers. 'We mustn't be sentimental' tries to persuade us that factory farming isn't, in fact, cruel. It implies that the whole problem had been invented by our sloppy imaginations.
Peter Cox
I hope you're not proposing to enslave us,' said Twoflower.Marchesa looked genuinely shocked. 'Certainly not! Whatever could have given you that idea? Your lives in Krull will be rich, full and comfortable-''Oh, good,' said Rincewind.'-just not very long.
Terry Pratchett
What had happened was that the formal pattern of black-and-white, mistress-and-servant, had been broken by the personal relation; and when a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.
Doris Lessing
No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.
Walter Scott
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Samuel Johnson
I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from His mercy.
Evelyn Waugh
His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners after great lengths of time and then gives great favors and great privileges and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God!
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Divine punishment are also mercies.
C.S. Lewis
If we have, through grace, an interest in Him who is the Fountain, we may rejoice in him when the streams of temporal mercies are dried up.
Matthew Henry
Mercy reflects the presence of the Lord in your heart and your life.
Elizabeth George
Predators did not need mercy.
Conn Iggulden
God had mercy, he knew. The Mongols had none.
Conn Iggulden
Mercy and cowardice are the same," she snapped out. "But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can't obey.
Joe Abercrombie
You want to be merciful. To stand in the light. I understand it. I admire it. But, my queen...Only the victors can be merciful.
Joe Abercrombie
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do no be too eager to deal out death in judgment.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Don't kill me,' said the knight. 'I yield. I yield. You can't kill a man at mercy.'Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were going back from his own soul. He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.'Get up,' he said. 'I won't hurt you. Get up, go.'The knight looked at him, on all fours like a dog, and stood up, crouching uncertainly.Lancelot went away and was sick.
T.H. White
The way to forget our miseries, is to remember the God of our mercies.
Matthew Henry
No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.
John Ruskin
Quick as a flash, Sawney Rath's eyes hardened. "Then I'm ordering you to skin Felch alive!" He took the otter's paw, closing it over the knife handle. "Obey me!"The crowded clearing became as silent as a tomb. All eyes were upon the Taggerung, awaiting his reaction to the order.Tagg turned his back on Sawney and strode to the side of the fox strung up to the beech bough. He raised the blade. Felch shut his eyes tight, his head shaking back and forth as his nerves quivered uncontrollably. With a sudden slash Tagg severed the thongs that bound him. Felch slumped to the ground in a shaking heap. Tagg's voice was flat and hard as he turned to face Sawney."I'm sorry to disobey your order. The fox is a sorry thief, but I will not take the life of a helpless beast.
Brian Jacques
All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
There is no exception to this rule: "All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant." They say there is no rule without an exception, but there is an exception to that rule.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Violence is weakness. True strength comes not through brutality and savagery, but through tenderness, mercy and grace.
Mango Wodzak
Certain actions bring harm, other more wizened actions bring harmony.
Mango Wodzak
It is bad enough to be unconverted and going to hell. It is even worse to say, “I know it and will not cry for mercy.
J.C. Ryle
The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak
Leila Aboulela
What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!'Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man.
Hilary Mantel
Faith is a private matter, usually held deep within a person, quiet, impossible to recognise or understand, if you have no faith yourself
Jennifer Worth
Sometimes truths are what we run from, and sometimes they are what we seek.
R.D. Ronald
There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.
Tahir Shah
Oh fair enough are sky and plain,But I know fairer far:Those are as beautiful againThat in the water are;The pools and rivers wash so cleanThe trees and clouds and air,The like on earth was never seen,And oh that I were there.These are the thoughts I often thinkAs I stand gazing downIn act upon the cressy brinkTo strip and dive and drown;But in the golden-sanded brooksAnd azure meres I spyA silly lad that longs and looks And wishes he were I.
A.E. Housman
There are many ways of attaining the various levels of human bliss. But one of the highest states of mental, spiritual and physical happiness is readily reached by way of a good meal, pleasant company, and easy seats by a good log fire. (Preferably there should be a vague impression of cold weather in the night outside your cosy room) The cares of the world are lost . There is a magical presence . You feel love for all humanity. Every remark made by your friend is a precious pearl of wisdom, and everything you say , encouraged by the warm smiles of your companion, is the essence of all your years of struggle and experience. You can suddenly recall incidents of the past, vivid-ly, and they take on a meaning which they never had before.
John Wyatt
She had the world’s worst poker face: her feelings floated across them like reflections on a still pond.
Jojo Moyes
But glad to have sat underThunder and rain with you,And grateful tooFor sunlight on the garden.
Louis MacNeice
The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.
C.S. Lewis
In a very real way, then, materials are a reflection of who we are, a multi-scale expression of our human need and desires.
Mark Miodownik