Quotes by British Authors - Page 2

Ocular infidelity is unfortunately rampant in this so called "artist's world.
Muse
I learned the Norse gods came with their own doomsday: Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, the end of it all. The gods were going to battle the frost giants, and they were all going to die.Had Ragnarok happened yet? Was it still to happen? I did not know then. I am not certain now.
Neil Gaiman
It seemed that the printers of the African maps had a slightly malicious habit of including, in large letters, the names of towns, junctions, and villages which, while most of them did exist in fact, as a group of thatched huts may exist or a water hole, they were usually so inconsequential as completely to escape discovery from the cockpit.
Beryl Markham
I explored because I was feeling really crappy, and I wanted to know why
Steven Magee
I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do: but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all; they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin's age.
Jane Austen
Let us begin with the fine-structure constant. ... The fine-structure constant is really the ratio of two natural units or atoms of action. ... We obtain action when we multiply energy by time. ... We are challenged to find a unified theory of electric particles and radiation in which the electrostatic type of action and the quantum type of action are traced to their source.
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope...""Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves.""No, sir.""There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn't.""Very true, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
Consider the situation: Money that was provided because of social networks rather than need; a project designed for prestige rather than to be used; a lack of monitoring and accountability; and an architect appointed for show by somebody with little interest in the quality of the work. The outcome is hardly surprising: a project that should never have been built was built, and built badly.
Tim Harford
C" is for colonies Rightly we boastthat of all the great nationsGreat Britain has most!
Mrs. Ernest Ames
Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.
George Orwell
Sam, Edilio’s a good guy,” Albert said, breaking in on Sam’s gloomy thoughts. “But like I said, he’ll tell the rest of them. Once the council knows, everyone knows. If everyone knows how desperate things are, what do you think will happen?”Sam smiled without humor. “About half the people will be great. The other half will freak.”“And people will end up getting killed,” Albert said. He cocked his head sideways, trying his best to look like the idea had just occurred to him. “And who is going to end up kicking butts? Who will end up playing Daddy and then be resented and blamed and finally told to go away?”“You’ve gained new skills,” Sam said bitterly. “You used to just be about working harder than anyone else and being ambitious. You’re learning how to manipulate people.”Albert’s mouth twitched and his eyes flashed angrily. “You’re not the only one walking around with a big load of responsibility on your shoulders, Sam. You play the big mean daddy who won’t let anyone have any fun, and I play the greedy businessman who is just looking out for himself. But don’t be stupid: maybe I am greedy, but without me no one eats. Or drinks.
Michael Grant
In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me.And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Death and burial were a public spectacle. Shakespeare may have seen for himself the gravediggers at St Ann's, Soho, playing skittles with skulls and bones.
Catharine Arnold
Operating in the interstices of communist China society was at once exhilarating and uncertain. There were no rules. Or rather, there was only one rule: that nothing is allowed. But the corollary, which reveals the true genius of China’s love of the grey – in contrast to the black and white of the West – is that everything is possible. Nothing is allowed but everything is possible. It’s just a matter of finding the right way to explain what you’re doing.
Graham Earnshaw
Why is it that we who have enjoyed the human free­doms which our forefathers fought so hard to win and to bequeath to us, do not, with the example of Russia before us, realize the horrors of life without freedom? Why is it that we cannot understand that there is no such thing as embracing Communism as an experiment? It is a one-way street, ending in a cul de sac of secret police terror, firing squads for the intellectuals and leaders and concentration camps and slave labor for the masses. There is no turning back; there is no escape.
Freda Utley
Instead of sniping at her like Mrs. Mi, Mrs. Ting let my mother do all sorts of things she wanted, like reading novels: before, reading a book without a Marxist cover would bring down a rain of criticism about being a bourgeois intellectual.
Jung Chang
He was a commander in the Russian army at a time when the Russians were our enemies and still part of the Soviet Union . This wasn't very long ago, Alex.The collapse of communism. It was only in 1989 that the Berlin Wall came down." She stopped. "I suppose none of this means very much to you.""Well, it wouldn't," Alex said. "I was only two years old.
Anthony Horowitz
Take notice of those intuitive whispers from the heart, they represent your true desires.
Steven Redhead
Edilio is in hiding,” Astrid snapped. “Edilio has to worry about being kicked out of the country. Our Edilio.”“He’s got a volunteer lawyer—”But Astrid wasn’t done. “They should be putting up statues to Edilio. They should be naming schools after that boy—no, no, I’m not going to call him a boy. If he’s not a man, then I’ll never meet one.”Lana nodded approvingly, obviously enjoying and sharing in Astrid’s outrage.
Michael Grant
In Egypt, like everywhere, the land is made to fit the sky; but here it is more so. Here it is possible to say, “This is land," and point, and “This is sky," and point, but the eyes can’t discover the dividing line.
Helen Oyeyemi
Basically, when it comes to women, both aging and eating are somehow shameful.
Emma Woolf
A suicide is tragic because nothing interrupted it.
Emma Woolf
The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.
Rosamunde Pilcher
Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.
Alex Morritt
Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August.I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of.Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'.Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means.So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of h
Jake Wood
I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.
Lee Child
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
It's shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I'd never suffered from.
Mark Lawrence
Grey hoped the Church would yet be able to save England from the fate of Tyre or Carthage, the great trading nations
Thomas Hughes
Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
Lewis Carroll
We are all 'right' if we are being truly ourselves.... that is the best we can be in each moment, until we learn more...
Jay Woodman
To me everything in business boils down to this: do you genuinely care about your customers - or just their cash?
Rasheed Ogunlaru
You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the girl of confidence. Either that or a scented candle.
David Nicholls
'You must've been waiting for someone like me to come along,' I said. I meant, because of the big bed. But Larry looked at me all funny and said, 'Yes, I think I was.'
J.L. Merrow
She is probably slightly too old to pout, but they've been going out a short enough time for it still to be cute.
Jojo Moyes
There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation.
Charlotte Brontë
Truly Time is a vast Denful of Horrour, round about which a Serpent winds and in the winding bites itself by the Tail. Now, now is the Hour, every Hour, every part of an Hour, every Moment, which in its end does begin again and never ceases to end: a beginning continuing, always ending.
Peter Ackroyd
Normally, all I'm interested in is what the person has created. Hopefully they're not a mass murderer or mass rapist, but their personality is not important to me at that stage. They've got to be pretty extraordinary to make things like that anyway.
Isabella Blow
Ignoring phone calls leads to a simple life with more free time. Ignoring emails works well also! I do both when I am trying to get things done.
Steven Magee
In the Scotland of the early seventeenth century, an old woman living alone in Kirkcudbrightshire was accused of witchcraft and on conviction was rolled downhill in a blazing tar barrel. One of the charges against her was that she walked withershins round a well near her cottage which was used by other people. The well was afterwards known as the Witch's Well. These episodes must surely serve as cautionary tales to anyone tempted to transgress the usual custom of walking deasil round a holy well.
Colin Bord
Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?''Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.
Anne Brontë
Corporate media rarely reports the fact that police internal affairs uphold hardly any complaints from the masses.
Steven Magee
She laughed - a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.
P.G. Wodehouse
It is reasonable to think that if you spend your days indoors under artificial lights, staring at a screen, sitting in computer electromagnetic interference (EMI) fields and exposed to radio waves, that you may eventually develop a strange form of radiation sickness.
Steven Magee
There is already enough chattering nonsense on the ground. Do we really need aviaries in pressurised tin cans at 30,000 feet as well ?
Alex Morritt
When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong.
Arthur Koestler
We designate the spirit of the well as 'she' because in most of her personifications she takes a female form, though not invariably. She appears in many guises - ghost, witch, saint, mermaid, fairy, and sometimes in animal form, often as a sacred fish - and her presence permeates well lore, and indeed water lore generally.
Colin Bord
Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment")
James Grant
I walked up the stairs and hesitated at the open door.
Susan Hill
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.
William Blake
I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
P.G. Wodehouse
NOW, touching this business of old Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius.
P.G. Wodehouse
When I was born, my mother dressed me as a boy because she could not afford to feed any more daughters. By the mystic laws of gender and economics, it ruins a peasant to place half a bowl of figs in front of his daughter, while his son may gorge on the whole tree, burn it for firewood and piss on the stump, and still be reckoned a blessing to his father.
Jeanette Winterson
If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.
Jeremy Bentham
I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?
Alan Moore
Most police cars are the equivalent of an electrical room on wheels and it does not surprise me that police officers that spend time in such a biologically toxic environment are displaying aggression.
Steven Magee
When I worked in astronomy, I routinely observed young college and university students working with liquid nitrogen and breathing nitrogen gas as they discharged it into the indoor environment at high altitude.
Steven Magee
When discharging industrial gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy, we never wore breathing respirators that fed us oxygenated air at above the legally required 19.5% oxygen levels.
Steven Magee
You may say, But wasn't this the Sixties? Yes, but only for some people, only in certain parts of the country.
Julian Barnes
She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.
Elias Canetti