Quotes by British Authors - Page 23

Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But there are a number of occasions when it suits him to pose as a sort of Candide: naive, and ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events. No doubt this pose costs him something in point of self-esteem. It is a pose, furthermore, which he often adopts at precisely the time when the record shows him to be knowledgeable, and when knowledge or foreknowledge would also confront him with charges of responsibility or complicity.
Christopher Hitchens
A place without meaning is no place to be.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being — a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say ‘Tomorrow I will mow the lawn,’ the ‘I’ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ‘I’ which does the pronouncing. The former ‘I’ is known to linguistic theory as the ‘subject of the enunciation’, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ‘I’, the one who speaks the sentence, is the ‘subject of the enunciating’, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two ‘I’s’ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The ‘subject of the enunciating’, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ‘I’ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot ‘mean’ and ‘be’ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ as: ‘I am not where I think, and I think where I am not.
Terry Eagleton
Certain American uses of deconstruction, Derrida has observed, work to ensure ‘an institutional closure’ which serves the dominant political and economic interests of American society. Derrida is clearly out to do more than develop new techniques of reading: deconstruction is for him an ultimately political practice, an attempt to dismantle the logic by which a particular system of thought, and behind that a whole system of political structures and social institutions, maintains its force. He is not seeking, absurdly, to deny the existence of relatively determinate truths, meanings, identities, intentions, historical continuities; he is seeking rather to see such things as the effects of a wider and deeper history of language, of the unconscious, of social institutions and practices.
Terry Eagleton
The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence.
Anthony Collins
The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
W Somerset Maugham
Empiricism assumes that objects can be understood independendy of observing subjects. Truth is therefore assumed to lie in a world external to the observer whose job is to record and faithfully reflect the attributes of objects. This logical empiricism is a pragmatic version of that scientific method which goes under the name of 'logical positivism', and is founded in a particular and very strict view of language and meaning.
David Harvey
Was it possible to find recompense, meaning, connection with others amidst the mess and the muddle ?
Elizabeth Buchan
The majority of the common people do not realize that calling 911 may result in a stressed out armed police officer that has a range of medical issues and is taking potent prescription drugs being sent to out to them.
Steven Magee
Who is She? She is your power, your Feminine source. Big Mama. The Goddess. The Great Mystery. The web-weaver. The life force. The first time, the twentieth time you may not recognize her. Or pretend not to hear. As she fills your body with ripples of terror and delight.But when she calls you will know you’ve been called. Then it is up to you to decide if you will answer.
Lucy H. Pearce
A truly free man is not free 'from' anything, nor free 'to' anything, he is just free. Free within himself.
Ilyas Kassam
We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much it matters what we achieve, how rare and unfair are our professional failures, how rife with misunderstandings are our relationships, how deep are our sorrows. Melodrama is individually always the order of the day.
Alain de Botton
Time alone helps us to remember who we are.
Fennel Hudson
When you realise you are just as ridiculous & just as #special as everyone else, you love them all.
Jay Woodman
The leading research in the adverse human health effects of electromagnetic radiation is not being done by well funded governments or corporations, it is coming from a few self funded independent researchers.
Steven Magee
Stop looking outside or at others for that which you seek of yourself.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
While you'll feel compelled to charge forward it's often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
All that is gold does not glitter,Not all those who wander are lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Kindness is a calling. Caring about people is powerful. Love changes lives.
Rachel Hamilton
A Princess has beautiful manners no matter who she’s dealing with. She would never stoop to being brusque when giving a burger order, or shouting at the barista who forgot her syrup shot. When we behave like true Princesses, people enjoy serving us, because they’re more likely to get a sympathetic smile instead of a complaint about the long wait.
Rosie Blythe
You may possibly become rich by just caring about yourself and what you want to gain from your profession and your life but you cannot possibly enrich the lives of everyone you meet that way.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Tomorrow's leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre - from the heart
Rasheed Ogunlaru
There are ultimately two choices in life: to fight it or to embrace it. If you fight it you will lose - if you embrace it you become one with it and you'll be lived.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
We're merely one tree with various types, shapes and sizes of leaves that all wave differently in the breeze
Rasheed Ogunlaru
True kindness ennobles the giver
Jocelyn Murray
All pursuits are pointless and fruitless unless and until love and compassion are found and then are the foundation and destination of all you do
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Some strive to make themselves great. Others help others see and find their own greatness. It's the latter who really enrich the world we live in
Rasheed Ogunlaru
We'd incorporated Asia into our bones - its colours and laughter, its smells, its rhythms, its tolerance and patience, its compassion, its lack of ageism.
Jane Wilson-Howarth
You may possibly become rich by just caring about yourself and what you want to gain from life but you cannot possibly enrich the lives of everyone you meet that way. The pathway to enlightenment and transformation and liberation is the heart not the mind.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Jesus loved manhood so much, that He delighted to honour it; and since it is a high honour, and indeed, the greatest dignity of manhood, that Jesus is the Son of man,
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Try to show grace, mercy and compassion, for one day you may need them.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
Only love and compassion can bring true and lasting transformation
Rasheed Ogunlaru
See this abdicated beast, once kingOf them all, nibble his claws:Not anger enough left—no, nor despair—To break his teeth on the bars.
Cecil Day-Lewis
Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm:An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phrase from D.H. Lawrence, and to immerse Jewishness in other and wider struggles. Indeed, the old canard about 'rootless cosmopolitanism' finds a perverse sort of endorsement in Jewish internationalism: the more emphatically somebody stresses that sort of rhetoric about the suffering of others, the more likely I would be to assume that the speaker was a Jew. Does this mean that I think there are Jewish 'characteristics'? Yes, I think it must mean that.
Christopher Hitchens
The radical hermeneutic of suspicion that characterizes all of post-modernity is essentially nihilistic, denying the very possibility of creative or healing love. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus we find the answer: the God who made the world is revealed in terms of a self-giving love that no hermeneutic of suspicion can ever touch, in a Self that found itself by giving itself away, in a Story that was never manipulative but always healing and recreating, and in a Reality that can truly be known, indeed to know which is to discover a new dimension of knowledge, the dimension of loving and being loved.
N.T. Wright
The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our hearts on the black horse of affliction. Jesus uses the whole range of our experiences to wean us from earth and woo us to Heaven.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward – in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.
G.K. Chesterton
Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory.
J.C. Ryle
You can't stand for Jesus without a Christ-like spirit.
John Yates
In particular, we must take account of the well-known and striking saying of Jesus to the dying brigand beside him, recorded by Luke (23.43). 'Today,' he said, 'you will be with me in paradise.' 'Paradise' is not the final destination; it is a beautiful resting place on the way there. But notice. If there is anyone in the New Testament to whom we might have expected the classic doctrine of purgatory to apply, it would be this brigand. He had no time for amendment of life; no doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires in what was left of his body. All the standard arguments in favour of purgatory apply to him. And yet Jesus assures him of his place in paradise, not in a few days or weeks, not if his friends say a lot of prayers and masses for him, but 'today.
N.T. Wright
They here shall be redeemed from sin,Shall here put on their glorious dress,Fine linen, pure, and white, and cleanThe saints' inherent righteousness.Love, perfect love, expels all doubt,Love makes them to the end endure;Their names thou never wilt blot out;Their life is hid, their heart is pure.Their names thou wilt vouchsafe to ownBefore thy Father's majesty,Pronounce them good, and say, 'Well done,Enter, and ever reign with me!
Charles Wesley
Do you have a girlfriend?''No,' I said quickly.Deny Honour again. Peter only denied Jesus three times. I must have denied Honour like three thousand times.
Ruth Ahmed
If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter, He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born.
C.S. Lewis
You dreamed like all mothers do.Until he began to speak aloud,Your boy,calling for justice in the market place,Demanding integrity and fair playin the courts and halls of business.Declaring the Realm of GodImminent,Manifest . . .Jesus leapt into the swelling crowdslike an axe into wood,Uncompromising and unrelentingin his passionate callfor peace and justice.Jesus, your boy,causing havoc in public,critiquing and condemningthe status quo,breaking rule after rule . . .And with every speech, with every act of defiance, with every call to liberation, with every amazing deed,Your dreams of peace and liberation,Your dreams of a secure old age,Your dreams of grandchildren—Evaporated.
Edwina Gateley
Adam glanced at me. His grin was back. I’d forgotten how easily he could wind me up.“You know, Eliza,” he said, “maybe you’re missing something here.”“You’re going to be missing a few teeth if you don’t explain yourself,” I growled.
Sam Dogra
magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy that can be tapped by those gifted enough, using a variety of techniques that center on layered spelling, mumbled incantations, and a burst of concentrated thought channeled through the index fingers. The technical name for this energy is "variable electro-gravitational mutable subatomic force," which doesn't mean anything at all--confused scientists just gave it an important-sounding name so as not to lose face. The usual term is "wizidrical energy," or simply "the crackle.
Jasper Fforde
In cases of organized and multi-perpetrator abuse when the abuse occurs in the context of rituals and ceremonies, some elements of the experience may have been staged specifically with the intention of encouraging the disbelief of others if the victim were to report the crime. For example, someone reporting such a crime may mention that the devil was present, or that someone well-known was there, or that acts of magic were performed. These were tricks and deceptions by the abusers-often experienced by the victims after being given medication or hallucinogenic drugs - that render the account unbelievable, make the witness sound unreliable, and protect the perpetrators. (page 120, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)
Graeme Galton
Then, things get hard, because once you know magic exists, you have to decide whether to be the bystander, or the magician … and we were all born to be magicians.
Dianna Hardy
Maths is at only one remove from magic.
Neel Burton
Marvel comes quickly, cloaked in the mundane. It's the woman waking to the smell of smoke as fire spreads, miles away, through her brother's house. It's the sharp flash of recognition as a young man glimpses, in the ordinary hubbub, the stranger with whom he will share his life. It's a mother's dream of her baby, blue in the cold store, six months before he comes, stillborn, into the world. Even the Church Fathers admitted the category of marvelous- or mirabilis, as they knew it. For them it was an irksome classification. A grey area.Compare the marvel with it's less troublesome metaphysical kin. In the thirteenth century, the miracle reflected the steady-handed authorship of the divine- truth made manifest. Similarly magic, or magicus, demonstrated with tell-tale showmanship the desperate guile of the devil. The marvel, however, was of poor performance and tended, therefore, towards ambiguity. It took shape in the merely mortal sphere. It seemed to lack the requisite supernatural chutzpah. Here, the clergy were typically surplus to requirements. Yet, if less outwardly compelling, the marvel was also less easily contained than either the miraculous or the magical. It remained more elusive. More stubborn. And if finally reducible in time, with the erosions of memory, to rationalization, anecdote, drinking tale or woman's lore, the marvel also rarely failed to leave behind a certain residual uncertainty. A discomfiting sense of possibility. Or, on bolder occasions, an appetite for wonder.
Alison MacLeod
It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently. "What would you like best to eat?""Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund.
C.S. Lewis
There's no mistaking what kind of potion I need. Caffeine - for alertness and rejuvenation.
Amy Alward
I cannot hope to make you understand how the world is truly made,' he told her. 'Metaphor, then: the world is a weave, like threads woven into cloth.' His hand came out of his sleeve with a strip of his red ribbon.'If you sa
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Perfume is the key to our memories
Kate Lord Brown
The first and last weakness of his life, before him again. For a moment he felt himself blinded by his own memories; his own remembrances of the wits and wiles of Marian Halcombe that would steal into his thoughts; the sound of her laughter at his outrageous tales, the shadowed glance of distrust, the way her eyebrows would raise ever so slightly despite her resolution to seem disinterested in his foreign insights. She was the first woman he ventured to have complete equality in matching his tremendous cleverness.
Wilkie Collins
No. Before you say it, I’m not going back outside. I’ve gone through nearly half a pack of smokes since I’ve been out there leaving you two to talk. I don’t think you’re very good for my health.” - Evo
L.J. Sealey
But don’t ever let me hear those words leave those beautifully pink lips of yours.” He warned her playfully. “Evo’s just fine.
L.J. Sealey
So I'm up the ghostie creek without an EMF meter
JoAnne Kenrick
Customer conversion is dependent on the right customer conversation
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?
Zadie Smith