Quotes by British Authors - Page 3

Biological databases impose particular limitations on how biological objects can be related to one another. In other words, the structure of a database predetermines the sorts of biological relationships that can be 'discovered'. To use the language of Bowker and Star, the database 'torques,' or twists, objects into particular conformations with respect to one another. The creation of a database generates a particular and rigid structure of relationships between biological objects, and these relationships guide biologists in thinking about how living systems work. The evolution of GenBank from flat-file to relational to federated database paralleled biologists' moves from gene-centric to alignment-centric to multielement views of biological action.
Hallam Stevens
Family's the most important thing.
Sophie Kinsella
But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high--innocent or guilty. She'd have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It's all the same in the end! However, I think she's fond of her man still--whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on-- her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women. Besides, you've got the laws on your side. Moses knew.
Thomas Hardy
He started to draw. He drew from memory. He had a good memory, something which, all things considered, was far from a blessing.The pencils moved quickly across the paper, scratching back and forth in deepening shades of grey. He leaned low over the paper, concentrating all his energy on his work. The candles flickered and dripped wax, having nothing better to do.Eventually he lifted his head and looked at his creation. The face of a young woman stared back at him from the paper, a slight smile playing on her lips. She looked as if she was about to say something, and that once she had you would laugh. She looked happy.Seven stared at the picture, his strange eyes unreadable – eyes that, now he made no effort to mask them, were from edge to edge only the deep blue of the dead ocean. He swallowed hard, as if he was trying to imbibe something foul tasting but necessary, like a child sipping medicine, and pulled another sheet of paper from his desk.
F.D. Lee
Waiting never makes things easier or less troublesome.
Steven Redhead
You put cow dung on my face?’ ‘Every day religiously until you were three. Why else do you think your skin is so clear?
Renita D'Silva
a good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving" Taoist dictum quoted by Sam Miller
Sam Miller
If the war had a noble purpose, it was this - to end the inhumanity those photographs showed. While India rarely spoke about its imperative as the moral one, and few people steeped in realpolitik can shed their cynicism when a politician speaks in moral terms, and the intervention certainly suited India's strategic interests, the fact remains that in the annals of humanitarian interventions, few were as swift, successful, purpose-driven and with humanitarian goals as the Indian intervention to liberate Bangladesh. India went in when it was attacked, and left before its troops became unpopular.
Salil Tripathi
Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs,” sighed George, patting the heading of the map. “We owe them so much.”“Noble men, working tirelessly to help a new generation of lawbreakers,” said Fred solemnly.“Right,” said George briskly. “Don’t forget to wipe it after you’ve used it —”“— or anyone can read it,” Fred said warningly.[Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 10]
Fred and George Weasley
For our Hogwarts is in danger from external, deadly foesAnd we must unite inside her or we'll crumble from within
J.K. Rowling
Hasn't your experience with the Time-Turner taught you anything, Harry? The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed...
J.K. Rowling
You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself plainly when you have need of him.
J.K. Rowling
I just take the train from platform nine and three-quarters," - Harry Potter
J.K. Rowling
You’re mental,” said George, trying to push it back at Harry.“No, I’m not,” said Harry. “You take it, and get inventing. It’s for the joke shop.”“He is mental,” Fred said in an almost awed voice. [Goblet of Fire]
Fred and George Weasley
And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.
J.K. Rowling
She needs to sort out her priorities
J.K. Rowling
First think of the person who lives in disguise,Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,The middle of middle and the end of end?And finally give me the sound often heardDuring the search for a hard-to-find word.Now string them together, and answer me this,Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?
J.K. Rowling
Hey, look — Harry’s got a Weasley sweater, too!”Fred and George were wearing blue sweaters, one with a large yellow F on it, the other a G.“Harry’s is better than ours, though,” said Fred, holding up Harry’s sweater. “She obviously makes more of an effort if you’re not family.
J.K. Rowling
I think I'm a tiny bit like Harry 'cos I'd like to have an owl. Yeah, that's the tiny bit, actually.
Daniel Radcliffe
It's leviOsa, not levioSA!
J.K. Rowling
You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.
J.K. Rowling
You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!
J.K. Rowling
First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.
Horatio Nelson
It took Caine a few beats to get it. “No. Go kill yourself. Eat your own gun. No. No no no.”“You’re happy here counting fish and nagging kids to work?” Edilio asked.“He’s not,” Virtue said, beating Toto to the punch and earning an annoyed glance from Caine.“He’s only done it for two days since the battle, and he’s already bored.
Michael Grant
Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind that neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life...
J.K. Rowling
Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.
Jasper Fforde
As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican—we have only to recall the Inquisition—the hands that are now raised in appeals to the 'Most Merciful' are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!
John William Draper
the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
Charles Dickens
When I worked on the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea we were advised to only use the medical oxygen after the daily headaches appeared and that just 15 minutes use was all that was needed to clear up the headaches for a while before we would need it again. We were not advised to use medical oxygen continuously as the Federal Aviation Regulations advises pilots to do. We were not advised to use pulse oximeters to monitor our blood oxygen levels or that the company medical oxygen should have been routinely administered only with our doctors prescription.
Steven Magee
Here, are the stiffening hills, here, the rich cargoCongealed in the dark arteries,Old veinsThat hold Glamorgan's blood.The midnight miner in the secret seams,Limb, life, and
Mervyn Peake
When Eve upon the first of MenThe apple press’d with specious cant,Oh! what a thousand pities thenThat Adam was not adamant!
Thomas Hood
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
Arthur Conan Doyle
If you blend in, you don't stand out.
Anthony T.Hincks
Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. [Fermat's] Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.
Andrew John Wiles
Really, it is unfair to say that English spelling is not an accurate rendering of speech. It is – it's only that it renders the speech of the 16th century.
Guy Deutscher
The sadness began later, in waves as crushing as the contractions had been,
Ruth Ahmed
I am what the water gave me, / a smoke-ring in a jar, / the braided rope / my ladder-to-the-light, / my shivering bird heart / caught
Pascale Petit
Any noseMay ravage with impunity a rose.
Robert Browning
You cannot have too many aconites. They cost, as I said before, about fifty shillings a thousand. A thousand will make a brave splash of colour, which lasts a month. If you can afford ten thousand, you are mad not to buy them. There are so many exciting places you can put them. . . in the hollow of a felled tree, by the border of a pond, in a circle round a statue, or immediately under your window, so that you can press your nose against the glass, when it is too cold to go out, and stare at them, and remember that spring is on its way.
Beverley Nichols
Gnats drifted on the same warm summer breeze that saw colorful paper lanterns swaying on their strings. Lily of the valley filled jam jars at each table, but sweet peas had won out in the battle to fragrance the evening air.
Anouska Knight
Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper confections, Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered,Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it
Arthur Hugh Clough
Suddenly Damask found herself staring down at the flowers through a dazzle of tears. The words sounded so innocent and so disarming - she remembered that she hadn't wanted to come through the beautiful woods at all; and there was no danger, nothing wrong except the wickedness of her own heart. She looked at Danny's big, brown, work-scarred hands gently gathering the flowers and her love for him was a physical pain. Oh, how she loved him; how she wished that he would ask her to marry him!"Norah Lofts
Norah Lofts
Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how small the effect of their medications were compared to placebos, and so did the FDA and other regulatory agencies. The companies found various ways to make the data seem more favorable to their products, and the FDA helped them keep their negative data secret. In fact, in some instances, the FDA urged the companies to keep negative data hidden, even when the companies wanted to reveal them. My colleagues and I hadn't really discovered anything new. We had merely revealed their 'dirty little secret'.
Irving Kirsch
Am I just a mosaic of myself, held in the shape of a whole person?
Emma Newman
When I am in the vibration of prosperity and abundance I am cosmically connected to my world and the Universe.
Debbie A. Anderson
Well, aren't you just saying it's better to be neurotic, sensitive, and miserable than unimaginative, adjusted and content? Is it really better?
Malcolm Bradbury
We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.
Mark Lawrence
The astounding natural beauty of the USA is offset by its extremely poor social security system that is clearly apparent when driving around the country.
Steven Magee
... the irregularities of the motion of Uranus...in order to find out whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it.[John Couch Adams on how he began to discover Neptune.]
John Couch Adams
A few years after working on Mauna Kea, I discovered that I had radiation sickness
Steven Magee
Tuning must come first. Each recital begins with a careful tightening of the pegs on the cross-bar, twisting them in their socket of red threads as each string is plucked and tested. He uses his thumb for this, softer and subtler than the plectrum, his head bent to the vibrating string and his lips slightly open, breathing quickly, as over the body of a lover.
Ann Wroe
When she spoke, Tom held his breath, so eagerly he listened; when she sang, he sat like one entranced. She touched his organ, and from that bright epoch even it, the old companion of his happiest hours, incapable as he had thought of elevation, began a new and deified existence.
Charles Dickens
How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?
Alexander McCall Smith
Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.
Neil Gaiman
It's the people who seem weak who are always suprisingly strong, and the ones who seem strong who are unexpectledly weak.
Lisa Jewell
I have noticed more than once in life that a taste for the ineffably twee can go hand-in-hand with a distinctly uncharitable outlook on the world, I once shared an office with a woman who had covered the wall space behind her desk with pictures of fluffy kitties; she was the most bigoted, spiteful champion of the death penalty with whom it has ever been my misfortune to share a kettle.A love of all things saccharine often seems present where there is a lack of real warmth or charity.
J.K. Rowling
You desire the end but close your eyes to the means. You want the garden to be beautiful, provided that the smell of manure is kept well away from your fastidious nose.
P.D. James
Yes, it was a "beautiful" sermon, tugging the emotions and conjuring up pictures of greatness and peace. But were they talking about the decent peppery ordinary old man he knew, or had the subject strayed to the story of some saint of the past? Or were there perhaps two men being buried under the same name? One perhaps had shown himself to Ross, while the other had been reserved for the view of men like William-Alfred. Ross tried to remember Charles before he was ill, Charles with his love of cockfighting and his hearty appetite, with his perpetual flatulence and passion for gin, with his occasional generosities and meannesses and faults and virtues, like most men. There was some mistake somewhere. Oh well, this was a special occasion...But Charles himself would surely have been amused. Or would he have shed a tear with the rest for the manner of man who had passed away?
Winston Graham
...some student asked if he [Larry Summers] didn’t have essentially the same relationship with Bob Rubin. Wasn’t Summer’s opposition to capital controls just a sop to Wall Street banks, which wanted to recoup their risky investments regardless of how doing so affected the country in which they had invested? “Summers just lost it,” said one audience member, a business school student. “he looked at the person and said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about and how dare you ask this question of the president of Harvard?
Richard Bradley
My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which had been my master's --- which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr Rochester's arms --- it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted -- confidence destroyed!
Charlotte Brontë