Quotes by British Authors - Page 207

All scholars are a bit mad. All obsessions are dangerous.
A.S. Byatt
Over the years of the Cultural Revolution, I was to witness people being attacked for saying "thank you" too often, which was branded as "bourgeois hypocrisy"; courtesy was on the brink of extinction.
Jung Chang
Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience."Possibly. But I like my madness.
Rafael Sabatini
It's madness, of course', thought Moist. 'But now I've got it, too.
Terry Pratchett
How do you stand it?" she said."Stand what?""All... this." Ella threw out her arm. "Does it not make you mad?"Clem glanced up. 'Much madness is divinest sense,' She said, and gave a small laugh. "There are plenty of mad women in here. I'm not sure I'm one of them though." She shrugged. "You'll get used to it.
Anna Hope
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat who was sitting in a tree "What road do I take?"The cat asked, "Where do you want to go?""I don't know " answered Alice. "Then, said the cat, it really doesn't matter, does it?
Lewis Carroll
I'm not sure what the moral of the bathroom-stool story is. Perhaps this: it's a good idea to settle for a few loose ends, because even if everything in your life is connected to everything else, that way madness lies.
Lorna Sage
Joe is never sure whether they're mad or just alarmingly and uncompromisingly incapable of self-delusion.
Nick Harkaway
The first part of madness is believing what you hear. The Second is acting on it.
Sam Hawksmoor
Act – make an event. Smash the coordinates and see where the smithereens fly. Let in the madness, and be sure to be a danger to oneself and others. Too much thinking turns you into that fool Hamlet.
Hanif Kureishi
Hail fellow well meet on the highway to madness. Madness is a small town very far away. Most of us, at some point, find we probably could walk there. Others have a road cave in and dump them there.
Helen Slavin
Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn't collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.
Jasper Fforde
Sir,' I interrupted him, 'you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady; you speak of her with hate --- with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel --- she cannot help being mad.
Charlotte Brontë
Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.
G.K. Chesterton
In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.
Charles Mackay
Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future..
Charles Mackay
He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs."One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is all right".
J.G. Ballard
Azhrarn the Beautiful," said Chuz lovingly, "it is your beautiful madness I have come to see.
Tanith Lee
There nearly always is a method in madness.
G.K. Chesterton
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
G.K. Chesterton
A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.
Tom Stoppard
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.” ~Louis de Bernieres
Louis de Bernières
The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.
Mick Jagger
Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing.
Penelope Fitzgerald
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
Rudyard Kipling
A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves
Agatha Christie
Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.
Douglas Adams
Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.
Douglas Adams
O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence!
Georgette Heyer
Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?
Jon Ronson
Let me be mad, then, by all means! mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world! Vive la folie! Vive l'amour! Vive l'animalisme! Vive le Diable!
Marie Corelli
Some madness doesn't act mad to begin with, sometimes it will knock politely at the door, and when you let it in, it'll simply sit in the corner without a fuss - and grow.
Nathan Filer
First sign of madness, talking to your own head.
J.K. Rowling
So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.
Alan Moore
Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter
Lewis Carroll
And how do you know that you're mad? "To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?" I suppose so, said Alice. "Well then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.
Lewis Carroll
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
R.D. Laing
You are the most ludicrous excuse for a man I've ever known - but there isn't a centimetre of you that I don't think is perfect.
Lucy Robinson
True perfection has to be imperfect. I know that sounds foolish, but it's true.
Noel Gallagher
Imperfection is underrated. Perfection is overrated.
Helena Bonham Carter
As in diamonds so in batting, perfection requires flawlessness and nowhere is a batting imperfection more quickly recognised than in the dropped catch. For this reason any innings worthy of consideration deserves to have all its flaws studied to establish whether or not it is the genuine gem or just masquerading as one under the glitter of big hitting or weight of runs.
Patrick Ferriday
There is a moment when time stops, when the air grows still, when you enter a state of nothingness, a state of purity and perfection. That is the moment to strive for.
Chloe Thurlow
Not his match! And have you not the heart in you to be anything but best? How many are his match? How many in this world do you think stand in the front rank? Are all the rest of us to give up and sit on our hands rather than serve humbly where we deserve?
Edith Pargeter
Sometimes to return is a vulgarity.
John Fowles
I wasn’t as untrusting. I had faith in the goodness of people, the perfection of love.What happened?Everything ends. And it’s how they end that leaves the lasting effect.
Zia Haider Rahman
In life there are perfect moments. You cannot plan them - the very act interferes with the laws of the universe - but you must be ready to recognise them when they come.
Chloe Thurlow
As the High Priestess looked down upon the child, she was struck by her holy perfection. She was a tiny person in miniature, and her beautiful eyes, little hands, and long eyelashes were sublime.
Alan Kinross
In the constant pursuit of perfection, junk food will always be a rather painful stumbling block
C.S. Woolley
There was something else,--something quite undefinable, that gave a singular glow and radiance to the whole countenance, and suggested the burning of a light through alabaster,--a creeping of some subtle fire through the veins which made the fair body seem the mere reflection of some greater fairness within.
Marie Corelli
Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
And so you prefer her faults to other people’s perfections?
Anne Brontë
Perfection is not something you strive for. Perfection is in the eyes of the beholder. Perfection is a state of grace, of peace of serenity, a moment as fleeting as a smile.
Chloe Thurlow
I do think imperfection is underrated
Helena Bonham Carter
. . . still we are none of us perfect . . .
Charlotte Brontë
Perfection isn't something that we can see and it isn't something that we can touch, but it exists here on Earth.It resides in each and everyone of us within our hearts.It's called LOVE!
Anthony T.Hincks
Hqve you never heard of priests proclaim that the meek will inherit the earth and wondered if kings of old didn't smile to hear it? Your reward comes after death. Nirvana. The wheel of life turns and we are elevated from animals to women, from women to men, from men to kings, from kings to gods, from gods to... perfection. And what is perfection now? Not crucifixion, not poverty endured patiently on the mountaintop. No--the perfect life is to have an annual salary of £120,000, an Aston Martin, a £1.6million-pound home, a wife, two children and at least two foreign holidays a year. Perfection is an idol built upon oppression. Perfection is the heaven that kept the masses suppressed; the promise of a future life that quells rebellion. Perfection is the self-hatred an overweight woman feels when she sees a slim model on TV; perfection is the resentment the well-paid man experiences when he beholds a miserable billionaire. Perfection kills. Perfection destroys the soul.
Claire North
But it's not Kit's physique that I'm talking about. It's the way he is, the confidence he has that is beyond his years. He speaks softly-I've never seen him lose his temper or shout-and when he walks into a room, It's like he's a magnet and everything, including the air, is drawn to him. Although I know he can strip an automatic weapon in under ten seconds and is trained to lea d men in battle, I've also seen him siniging lullabies to his baby nieces while he cradles them in his arms, and jump off a pier to save a drowning dog.
Mila Gray
The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS.
Winston S. Churchill
Later the place was as deserted as Malcolm Muggeridge's Christmas party of fellow intellectuals.
William Donaldson