Quotes by British Authors - Page 202

Cats may walk by themselves, but there are times when they need our support.
Nicholas Dodman
Cats ask plainly for what they want.
Walter Savage Landor
When the tea is brought at five o'clockAnd all the neat curtains are drawn with care,The little black cat with bright green eyesIs suddenly purring there.
Harold Monro
Japanese goldfish,With your gossamer tail,You are the loveliest creatureI have ever seen.""Japanese kitten,Put your tongue back in where it belongsAnd go away.I know exactly what you are thinking.
Paul Gallico
Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things--unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog...
Terry Pratchett
I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food - which they take for granted - but his or her entertainment value. Asmodeus took to his toy enthusiastically. In another week he permitted me to stroke him, producing a raucous purr, but, in order to save his face, pretending to be asleep.
Geoffrey Household
Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.
Beverley Nichols
It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines.
Bruce Fogle
The cat dropped the rat between its two front paws. "There are those," it said with a sigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, "who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one - after all, it permits the occasional funny little running snack to escape, from time to time. How often does your dinner get to escape?
Neil Gaiman
Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle.
Terry Pratchett
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
Terry Pratchett
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.
Walter Scott
She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said."Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats."Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?
Neil Gaiman
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity.
Terry Pratchett
Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.
Terry Pratchett
It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see.
Eleanor Farjeon
And the kittykats would have to erect scaffolding and a pulley to get him down. Mind you, I wouldn't put that past them. Sometimes when they are behind the sofa supposedly purring, I think they are drilling.
Louise Rennison
For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.
Susanna Clarke
The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.
Neil Gaiman
Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.
Terry Pratchett
You put quite a fight for a tame kitty
Erin Hunter
Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?''That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.'I don't much care where—' said Alice.'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.'—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.
Lewis Carroll
And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they had earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it just might work.
Terry Pratchett
I hate cats."Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant."I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.
Terry Pratchett
Fire will save the Clan
Erin Hunter
Jaypaw narrowed his eyes. "I'm not as blind as you think.
Erin Hunter
Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!""Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.
Susanna Clarke
What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?''Cats don't have names,' it said.'No?' said Coraline.'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.
Neil Gaiman
I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.
Neil Gaiman
The author challenges how much sanctity has to do with sameness, as he says saints are as different from each other as those in any group -- even murderers.
G.K. Chesterton
You cannot live with a paw in each world.
Erin Hunter
Four will Become Two, Lion and Tiger will Meet in Battle, and Blood will Rule the Forest.
Erin Hunter
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
John Maynard Keynes
It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent.
J.M. Barrie
Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.''But should you wish yourself to be like him?''No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.
Anne Brontë
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Rudyard Kipling
Nothing is the same.
Silvia Hartmann
If you want to be a big success then it becomes a dick showing contest, and that's not what it's about. It can't be about 'My book sold more copies than your book.' It can't be about 'More people went to see my movie than went to see your movie.' If it is about that, then Danielle Steel must be an extraordinarily wonderful author because she sells so many copies. You can't do calculations that way.What interests me is holding the vision: doing something that is yours and making sure that it can't be like anyone else's.
Clive Barker
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.
Thomas Hardy
There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.
Stephen Fry
We like to think of individuals as unique. Yet if this is true of everyone, then we all share the same quality, namely our uniqueness. What we have in common is the fact that we are all uncommon. Everybody is special, which means that nobody is. The truth, however, is that human beings are uncommon only up to a point. There are no qualities that are peculiar to one person alone. Regrettably, there could not be a world in which only one individual was irascible, vindictive or lethally aggressive. This is because human beings are not fundamentally all that different from each other, a truth postmodernists are reluctant to concede. We share an enormous amount in common simply by virtue of being human, and this is revealed by the vocabularies we have for discussing human character. We even share the social processes by which we come to individuate ourselves.
Terry Eagleton
In Ankh-Morpork you can be whoever you want to be and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully, they don't really care.
Terry Pratchett
Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or -- most crucially of all, for a teenage girl -- simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right -- right, down into their clever, brilliant bones -- but lonely.
Caitlin Moran
The fertilising conflict of individualities is the ultimate meaning of the personal life.
H.G.Wells
[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.
John Locke
The point is that you are an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That's concrete individuality: an individuality that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individualities, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly.
China Miéville
In our own way, in your own way, we are all of us a masterpiece. Everyone is unique.
Chloe Thurlow
We are flowers in the field seeking our individuality. We may seem similar but we are all unique, without exception. Everyone is special.
Chloe Thurlow
Take a step back and view the world through your eyes, not someone else’s. Listen to your heart and decide what you really want.
Fennel Hudson
As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: ‘Don’t waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!’I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality.
Tahir Shah
There is another more psychological obstacle to the full development of love in the modern world, and that is the fear that many people feel of not preserving their individuality in tact. This is a foolish and rather modern terror. Individuality is not an end in itself; it is something that must enter into fructifying contact with the world, and in so doing must lose its separateness. An individuality which is kept in a glass case withers, whereas on e that is freely expended in human contacts becomes enriched.
Bertrand Russell
Why--?" he jerked his thumb in the direction of the young, "when they're so lovely--"She too looked at the girl, who was fastening a flower that had come undone in the front of her frock. She smiled. She said nothing. Then half consciously she echoed his question without a meaning in her echo, "Why?"He was dashed for a moment. It seemed to him that she refused to help him. And he wanted her to help him. Why should she not take the weight off his shoulders and give him what he longed for --assurance, certainty? Because she too was deformed like the rest of them? He looked down at her hands. They were strong hands; fine hands; but if it were a question, he thought, watching the fingers curl slightly, of "my" children, of "my" possession, it would be one rip down the belly; or teeth in the soft fur of the throat. We cannot help each other, he thought, we are all deformed. Yet, disagreeable as it was to him to remove her from the eminence upon which he placed her, perhaps she was right, he thought, and we who make idols of other people, who endow this man, that woman, with power to lead us, only add to the deformity, and stoop ourselves.
Virginia Woolf
When I was a girl . . . I imagined that life was individual, one's own affair; that the events happening in the world outside were important enough in their own way, but were personally quite irrelevant. Now, like the rest of my generation, I have had to learn again and again the terrible truth . . . that no life is really private, or isolated, or self-sufficient. People's lives were entirely their own, perhaps--and more justifiably--when the world seemed enormous, and all its comings and goings were slow and deliberate. But this is so no longer, and never will be again, since man's inventions have eliminated so much of distance and time; for better, for worse, we are now each of us part of the surge and swell of great economic and political movements, and whatever we do, as individuals or as nations, deeply affects everyone else.
Vera Brittain
Proudly buck the trend. Dare to be different.
Fennel Hudson
Be batty, be traditional, and be proud.
Fennel Hudson
I propose a conspiracy of orphans. We exchange winks. We reject hierarchies. All hierarchies. We take the shit of the world for granted and we exchange stories about how we nevertheless get by. We are impertinent. More than half the stars in the universe are orphan-stars belonging to no constellation. And they give off more light than all the constellation stars.
John Berger
He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.
Aidan Chambers
Believe it or not, some of us have piercings and tattoos and dye our hair because we think it looks pretty, not for any deep sociological reason. This isn't an act of protest against cultural or social repression. It's not a grand, deliberately defiant gesture against capitalists or feminists or any other social group. It's not even the fashion equivalent to sticking two fingers up at the world. The boring truth of it, Gabriel, is that I don't dress like this to hurt my parents or draw attention to myself or make a statement. I just do it because I think it looks nice. Disappointed?
Alex Bell
I would like to have nothing to do with you for hours on end and then come back and find you, come back with things I’ve thought and found all on my own— on my own, not through you.
Helen Oyeyemi
But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.
John Stuart Mill