Quotes by British Authors - Page 19

Silence is the unbearable repartee.
G.K. Chesterton
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something but by refraining from doing. Great is truth but still greater from a practical point of view is silence about truth.
Aldous Huxley
Silence propagates itself and the longer talk has been suspended the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Samuel Johnson
That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
Thomas Hardy
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture.
Aldous Huxley
He has the gift of quiet.
John le Carré
Shadows are in reality when the sun is shining the most conspicuous thing in a landscape next to the highest lights.
John Ruskin
He was not of an age but for all time!
Ben Jonson
I am always looking for meaningful one-night stands.
Dudley Moore
Sex ought to be a wholly satisfying link between two affectionate people from which they emerge unanxious rewarded and ready for more.
Alex Comfort
Definition of a Jewish nymphomaniac: A woman who will make love the same day she has her hair done.
Maureen Lipman
I'll wager that in ten years it will be fashionable again to be a virgin.
Barbara Cartland
They serve God well Who serve his creatures.
Caroline Norton
Sex unlike justice should not be seen to be done.
Evelyn Laye
It may be the cock that crows but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
Margaret Thatcher
Selfishness is the only real atheism aspiration unselfishness the only real religion.
Israel Zangwill
The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.
Leigh Hunt
Ask God's blessing on your work but don't ask him to do it for you.
Dame Flora Robson
To character and success two things contradictory as they may seem must go together-humble dependence and manly independence humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self.
William Wordsworth
Put your trust in God my boys and keep your powder dry!
Valentine Blacker
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost " and say "I lost it."
Sydney J. Harris
It is sometimes the man who opens the door who is the last to enter the room.
Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco
No human being can really understand another and no one can arrange another's happiness.
Graham Greene
To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
Charles Caleb Colton
Happiness is like time and space-we make and measure it ourselves it is as fancy as big as little as you please just a thing of contrasts and comparisons.
George du Maurier
Felicity felicity ... is quaffed out of a golden cup ... the flavour is with you alone and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.
Joseph Conrad
When I have been unhappy I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds when I am happy a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy but I that make it sweet.
John Ruskin
Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things our own meditation must form our judgement.
Isaac Watts
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Edward Gibbon
Make good use of bad rubbish.
Elizabeth Beresford
Choice of attention-to pay attention to this and ignore that-is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.
W.H. Auden
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
Man is not the creature of circumstances circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents and man is more powerful than matter.
Benjamin Disraeli
Heaven and hell is right now. ... You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions.
George Harrison
You need to claim the events in your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done which may take some time you are fierce with reality.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
No external advantages can supply self-reliance. The force of one's being ... must come from within.
R. W. Clark
No bird soars too high if he soars on his own wings.
William Blake
The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us like the Kingdom of Heaven rather than without.
Samuel Butler
Every man paddles his own canoe.
Frederick Marryat
There is no dependence that can be sure but a dependence upon one's self.
John Gay
I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
If you wish in this world to advance Your merits you're bound to enhance You must stir it and stump it And blow your own trumpet Or trust me you haven't a chance.
W.S. Gilbert
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough Without ever having felt sorry for itself.
D.H. Lawrence
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
George Eliot
Never give way to melancholy resist it steadily for the habit will encroach.
Sydney Smith
Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason not that you have no reason for living.
Tom O'Connor
The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much unintermit-tent gloom.
Margaret Drabble
Despair is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
I got the blues thinking of the future so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges or scrub the floor.
D.H. Lawrence
When you find yourself overpowered as it were by melancholy the best way is to go out and do something.
John Keble
The opposite of having faith is having self-pity.
Og Guinness
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
Cyril Connolly
When any fit of gloominess or perversion of mind lays hold upon you make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.
Samuel Johnson
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
George Eliot
He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
John Bright
To hear complaints is wearisome to the wretched and the happy alike.
Samuel Johnson
He who knows himself best esteems himself least.
H. G. Bohn
There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.
Philip James Bailey
I am an ordinary person but carried to extremes.
Fay Weldon
There may be ways in which we can work for change. We don't have to do dramatic things or devote our entire lives to it. We can lead normal lives but at the same time try hard not to be bystanders.
Helen Bamber