Quotes by British Authors - Page 44

There is no armour against fate death lays his icy hands on kings.
James Shirley
I have known no man of genius who had not to pay in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual for what the gods had given him.
Max Beerbohm
I'd like to be a truck driver. I think you could run your life that way. It wouldn't be such a bad way of doing it. It would offer a chance to be alone.
Princess Anne of England
Men would be angels angels would be gods.
Alexander Pope
None think the great unhappy but the great.
Edward Young
If solid happiness we prize within our breast this jewel lies And they are fools who roam the world has nothing to bestow From our own selves our bliss must flow And that dear hut-our home.
Nathaniel Cotton
We are convinced that happiness is never to be found and each believes it possessed by others to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Samuel Johnson
We are under the spell always of what is distant from us. It is not in our nature to desire passionately what is near at hand.
Alec Waugh
Happiness grows at our firesides and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.
Douglas Jerrold
When a man's busy leisure strikes him as a wonderful pleasure and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy.
Robert Browning
Pioneers may be picturesque figures but they are often rather lonely ones.
Nancy Astor
It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.
Samuel Johnson
To have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals.
L. Susan Stebbing
When every blessed thing you have is made of silver or of gold you long for simple pewter.
W.S. Gilbert
The true exercise of freedom is-can-nily and wisely and with grace-to move inside what space confines-and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted.
A.S. Byatt
Order is Heaven's first law.
Alexander Pope
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
Dean William R. Inge
All cases are unique and very similar to others.
T.S Eliot
That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life but in a new way.
Doris Lessing
I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.
William Blake
Large organization is loose organization. Nay it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.
G.K. Chesterton
Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life.
H.G.Wells
I am not fond of uttering platitudes In stained-glass attitudes.
W.S. Gilbert
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.
Winston Churchill
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
Joseph Conrad
Still round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate.
J.R.R. Tolkien
There is a budding morrow in midnight.
John Keats
Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud and one the stars.
Frederick Langbridge
When things come to the worst they generally mend.
Susanna Moodie
A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays And confident tomorrows.
William Wordsworth
The secret to success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli
When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism but in spite of my face - that is my experience - I remain an optimist.
Richard Jeffries
I think the young actor who really wants to act will find a way ... to keep at it and seize every opportunity that comes along.
Sir John Gielgud
Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
Samuel Johnson
To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach is the great art of life.
Samuel Johnson
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.
Benjamin Disraeli
Do not wait for ideal circumstances nor for the best opportunities they will never come.
Janet Erskine Stuart
To see a shadow and think it is a tree-that is a pity but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.
Phyllis Bottome
If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities.
John B. Gough
Public opinion is a compound of folly weakness prejudice wrong feeling right feeling obstinacy and newspaper paragraphs.
Robert Peel
One should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Bertrand Russell
Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
Benjamin Disraeli
Public opinion a vulgar impertinent anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average man.
Dean William R. Inge
It is always considered a piece of impertinence in England if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects.
Sydney Smith
You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself - and how little I deserve it.
W.S. Gilbert
It is not truth but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.
Walter Raleigh
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you if you'll just rattle your jewelry.
John Lennon
New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed without any other reason but because they are not already common.
John Locke
Do not choose to be wrong for the sake of being different.
Lord Samuel
I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare but then I thought Why should I? He never reads any of mine.
Spike Milligan
I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.
E. V. Lucas
Speeches are like steer horns - a point here a point there and a lot of bull in between.
Evelyn Anderson
After such an introduction I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say.
Evelyn Anderson
A good speech like a woman's skirt should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. I have been asked to give my address in the remaining five minutes. That I can do! Here it is: 10 Carlton Gardens London England.
Lord Balfour
Time is the greatest and longest-established spinner of all. ... His factory is a secret place his work noiseless and his hands are mutes.
Charles Dickens
Time is the sea in which men grow are born or die.
Freya Stark
Time is eternity begun.
James Montgomery
The less one has to do the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns one procrastinates one can do it when one will and therefore one seldom does it at all whereas those who have a great deal of business must buckle to it and then they always find time enough to do it.
Lord Chesterfield
You can't measure time in days the way you can money in dollars because each day is different.
Phillip Hewett
A little space of time before time expires a little way of breath.
Algernon Swinburne