Quotes by British Authors - Page 204

There could never be innocence in a world without justice.
Tim Bowler
The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe one discharge from sin and error.The only hope, or else despairLies in the choice of pyre or pyre-To be redeemed from fire by fire.Who then devised the torment? Love.Love is the unfamiliar NameBehind the hands that woveThe intolerable shirt of flameWhich human power cannot remove.We only live, only suspireConsumed by either fire or fire.
T.S Eliot
A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treasury accompanied him wherever he went, but it was taken at night in small doses - a finger of Longfellow, Macaulay, Mangan: 'Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love...' His taste was romantic. For public exhibition he has his Wallace. He wanted passionately to be indistinguishable on the surface from other men: he wore his moustache like a club tie - it was his highest common factor, but his eyes betrayed him - brown dog's eyes, a setter's eyes, pointing mournfully towards Bond Street.
Graham Greene
If the pirate with a scarf had been more poetically minded he’d have thought that her eyes were like a thousand emeralds, glittering in a far-off pirate treasure chest. But he wasn’t, so he just thought that she had really really green eyes, a bit like seaweed.
Gideon Defoe
The very first thing I saw was his eyes, bluer and brighter than the sea itself. They gazed at me, so dazzling, and for an instant I couldn't even feel the pain. I was too overcome by the handsomeness of this sandy haired boy
Rebecah McManus
Their eyes are precisely similar, and they are those of Catherine Earnshaw.
Emily Brontë
Observe the eyes, for they are the windows to her soul.
Habeeb Akande
Meanwhile Bellgrove had been savouring love's rare aperitif, the ageless language of the eyes.
Mervyn Peake
It's like she had a soul that was much too big for her; it filled her to the brim till there was no more space, so it flowed out through her eyes.
Nick Lake
from RIVERMy body is filled with sand. The heavy grains flow from my eyes and seek somewhere to fall.Speak to me friends. Tell me I am free to go now, for I need to sit alone in the sun on the river bank, juggling pebbles.
Jay Woodman
The eyes were of a color which he could never decide on, afterwards when he told the story he used to say they were the color of everything in Spring.
John Buchan
He had lovely eyes, really—not assessing, at all, but big and dark and…waiting.
Charlotte Stein
I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty. Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.
Julian Barnes
It would be wrong to kill oneself if one did not know exactly the nature of one's eyes.
Kate Williams
When you view yourself through the lens of God’s Word, you will better understand God’s love for you and the worth you have in His eyes.
Elizabeth George
It was his eyes, so challenging and with a piercing look about them. They were eyes that trusted in nothing and they made her uncomfortable around him, self-conscious.
Gemma Malley
There is so much to see and learn here that I often find I'm not blinking in case I miss anything. I have to use artificial tears to moisten my eyes.
Jay Woodman
And we have the same colour eyes. When I look into his, I feel I'm looking into myself.
Alan Cumming
And I figured that he can be my ears and I can be his eyes. A good trade-off, don't you think?
Alison Jackson
The feature that makes people look at her twice, sometimes with suspicious glances, is her eyes. They are too large, wide-set, slanted a bit. And they judge, those eyes do, they watch and they take note and they judge all that they see, and lots of folks do not like that much.To the innocent, her eyes are arresting. To a person with something on his conscience, they seem too knowing.
Michael Grant
That's right," said Door. Her cheek lightly grazed and her dirty reddish hair was tangled; tangled but not matted. And her eyes...Richard realized that he could not tell what color her eyes were. They were not blue, or green, or brown, or gray; they reminded him of fire opals: there were burning greens and blues, and even reds and yellows that vanished and glinted as she moved.
Neil Gaiman
I closed my eyes then but it was too dark to clearly see that vision that my body would conjure out of blood and the inside of skin when light hit it, but I'd seen it so often, examined it so carefully, that it wasn't hard for me to call to mind.
China Miéville
There was a shepherd the other day up at Findon Fair who had come from the east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different from the eyes of other men.
Hilaire Belloc
Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough.“You’ve been so brave.”He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.
J.K. Rowling
For some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coercive. He had small eyes, a large loose mouth, the lips thick, a somewhat receding chin. The eyes were the main feature. They were unusual eyes, not only almost unnaturally small, but vague, moist, dreamy, the eyes of a medium. His cherubic side, increased by a long slightly uptilted nose, was a little too good to be true, with eyes like that. In the manner in which he gave you all his attention there was a taste for mastery.
Anthony Powell
Leslie-Ann set down her own bucket and watched, marveling, as a quarter of an inch of water covered the bottom.When she looked away, she saw an older kid. She’d seen him around. But usually he was with Orc and she was too scared of Orc ever to get near him.She tugged on Howard’s wet sleeve. He seemed not to be sharing in the general glee. His face was severe and sad.“What?” he asked wearily.“I know something.”“Well, goody for you.”“It’s about Albert.”Howard sighed. “I heard. He’s dead. Orc’s gone and Albert’s dead and these idiots are partying like it’s Mardi Gras or something.”“I think he might not be dead,” Leslie-Ann said.Howard shook his head, angry at being distracted. He walked away. But then he stopped, turned, and walked back to her. “I know you,” he said. “You clean Albert’s house.”“Yes. I’m Leslie-Ann.”“What are you telling me about Albert?”“I saw his eyes open. And he looked at me.
Michael Grant
You would say you don't see it: at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-by, what you express with that organ, I am quick at interpreting its language).
Charlotte Brontë
St. John's eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage.
Charlotte Brontë
...his eyes lit up and glowed red against the dark bulk of it. A moment they remained so ... then they soared up, phosphorescently opalescent, with a predominance of red, like two sinful dead planets escaping from Hell.
Jessie Douglas Kerruish
She had eyes that bore deep into his heart, bringing a sweet warm wave of assurance within; eyes that cradled him in the crisp black-and-white world on the other side of the picture, where life was, at least, beautifully lit.
Stephen Mosley
Eyes as black and as shiny as chips of obsidian stared back into his. They were eyes like black holes, letting nothing out, not even information.
Neil Gaiman
[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
Charles Dickens
Why does he have such an unnerving effect on me? His over-whelming good looks maybe? The way his eyes blaze at me? The way he strokes his index finger against his lower lip? I wish he'd stop doing that.
E.L. James
All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.
Philip Pullman
His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.
Warsan Shire
We were left with nothing because of a love like acid that ate its way through our entire family.
R.D. Ronald
It was awful, he cried, awful, awful!Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.
Virginia Woolf
In a flash of anger, Midas grabbed a sod of earth and hurled it at the water, which broke into a hundred chained circles. Picturing Ida like the body in the bog made his heart seem to wilt and blow away. His face screwed through expressions.
Ali Shaw
Love doesn't think like that. All right, it's blind as a bat--''Bats have radar. Yours doesn't seem to be working.
Iris Murdoch
He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.
Alain de Botton
The moment he left the warm sheets and the door clicked shut, I had that feeling you get when you are lost in a strange town at night. I curled into the chair where he had watched me undress and tears wet my cheeks. Then I dried my eyes, I looked in the mirror, and I said these two words. Never again.
Chloe Thurlow
When it happens it happens instantly. It's like diving into a pool of warm silky water, like flying through the air on invisible wings, like shedding an old skin and growing a new one. When you fall in love the spirals of your DNA unwind and rewind in the opposite direction. What was black becomes white.
Chloe Thurlow
The way the leaves on the trees tremble in the passing air is the way love reaches you, from all directions at once, mysterious, overwhelming, indescribable. To be in love is to find something you didn't know was missing.
Chloe Thurlow
I was always in love with love and now I am in love. In love, everything looks different. Everything tastes different. It is as if you have been reborn, transformed, become another person whom you don't completely recognise.
Chloe Thurlow
When I first saw you, you were like . . . ' He shakes his head, tugs gently on my hair. 'A rainbow. I always knew you came with a storm.
Emma Trevayne
You see? That's the point. It's all a big guess. They hope, they pray, they cook and garden and get a better job to pay the mortgage and read dirty books to keep bedtime interesting, but they don't know. There are no guarantees. Sometimes you just stop loving someone. You just stop.
Tania Kindersley
When we first split up, he called me a stalker, but that's like an emotive word, "stalker", isn't it? I don't think you can call it stalking when it's just phone calls and letters and emails and knocking on the door. And I only turned up at his work twice. Three times, if you count his Christmas party, which I don't, because he said he was going to take me to that anyway.
Nick Hornby
Love enters us like a vague ailment. Your head spins. Your underarms tingle. Love hurts and love has consequences: marriage, babies, separation, longing, human complications.
Chloe Thurlow
Love and being in love are not the same thing. The woman takes the man she loves into her body and absorbs his oils and essence. A part of him enters her and becomes a part of her.
Chloe Thurlow
What is love? Imagine a helium balloon tied down and then you cut the ropes on a windy day. That is love.
Chloe Thurlow
I understood how strangers met and fell into bed, not how they met and fell in love. I wasn't sure what falling in love meant. The very notion seemed so corny, so arbitrary, so fragile.
Chloe Thurlow
I had avoided writing about love. I had never sensed that rush and buzz that comes with love, the release into the brain of body chemicals, pheromones and dopamine - the taste of love to which I was becoming addicted, his spearminty tongue when we kissed, his male sweat, the outdoor vanilla tang of his semen.
Chloe Thurlow
Love is a noun as well as a verb, a treacherous construct.
Chloe Thurlow
Is this love? The light looks different. Actually the shade looks different. I feel different. Everything is just so different I don't know where to begin...
Chloe Thurlow
I was besieged by a yearning, a craving, a burning desire. My heart had opened like one of those mysterious flowers that only bloom at night.
Chloe Thurlow
We're more broken if we don't have each other. Let me put us back together again. I need you, Olivia. Desperately. You're making my world light
Jodi Ellen Malpas
I thought that love would last forever. But nothing is forever. Life is not forever. The only reliable permanence is change. Love hurts because change is painful. Love hurts because love lost is an assault on our ego. We fear that we will fail again and those who live in fear of failure slowly but inevitably fail.
Chloe Thurlow
Man was not born to be monogamous. What has changed in the 21st century – at 21 the world surely has come of age – is the understanding that woman is not meant to be monogamous either. Just as love hurts, new love heals.
Chloe Thurlow
While love lasts it should be relished, gobbled up like ice cream, explored as the conquistadors explored the unknown continent. But when love evaporates, when love hurts, we must learn to let go of the idea that love is forever.
Chloe Thurlow
Love is not a spaceship you construct and then fly off together into the stars. Love is a soap bubble that bursts in the air. Love is the first winter snowflake that falls into you palm, a mirage that glows in the sun and fades in the shadows.
Chloe Thurlow