Quotes by British Authors - Page 490

You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind.
Rafael Sabatini
The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon "Grand Tours" of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship.
Peter Ackroyd
I think actually if you take the analogy with other areas of engineering, and increasingly of science and even mathematics, you can see people do not have to learn the vast number of formulae they used to learn. Instead, they have to learn to use the computer effectively. This frees them, I feel, to understand concepts and the foundations while they’re learning the mechanics of the application of the theory.
C.A.R. Hoare
The history of learning amounts to a history of specialization.
Beryl Smalley
I heard this story once," she said, "where this bloke got locked up for years and years and he learned amazin' stuff about the universe and everythin' from another prisoner who was incredibly clever, and then he escaped and got his revenge.""What incredibly clever stuff do you know about the universe, Gytha Ogg?" said Granny."Bugger all," said Nanny cheerfully."Then we'd better bloody well escape right now.
Terry Pratchett
When people recover from depression via psychotherapy, their attributions about recovery are likely to be different than those of people who have been treated with medication. Psychotherapy is a learning experience. Improvement is not produced by an external substance, but by changes within the person. It is like learning to read, write or ride a bicycle. Once you have learned, the skills stays with you. People no not become illiterate after they graduate from school, and if they get rusty at riding a bicycle, the skill can be acquired with relatively little practice. Furthermore, part of what a person might learn in therapy is to expect downturns in mood and to interpret them as a normal part of their life, rather than as an indication of an underlying disorder. This understanding, along with the skills that the person has learned for coping with negative moods and situations, can help to prevent a depressive relapse.
Irving Kirsch
In my school, he thought, they learn bitterness and frustration and how to grow old.
Graham Greene
And this is the sense of the word "grammar" which our inaccurate student detests, and this is the sense of the word which every sensible tutor will maintain. His maxim is "a little, but well"; that is, really know what you say you know: know what you know and what you do not know; get one thing well before you go on to a second; try to ascertain what your words mean; when you read a sentence, picture it before your mind as a whole, take in the truth or information contained in it, express it in your own words, and, if it be important, commit it to the faithful memory. Again, compare one idea with another; adjust truths and facts; form them into one whole, or notice the obstacles which occur in doing so. This is the way to make progress; this is the way to arrive at results; not to swallow knowledge, but (according to the figure sometimes used) to masticate and digest it.
John Henry Newman
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
The best thing for disturbances of the spirit is to learn. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the poor mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
T.H. White
Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has.
Freya Stark
I don’t really know what “intellectual” means, but if it means you’ve got a desire to learn, you’ve got a desire to look for things that haven’t been presented to you, then, maybe. I think that “intellectual” is quite an exclusive word. I think it’s just for anyone that has a thirst or a hunger to improve themselves, or a yearning to escape from somewhere to get to a better place.
Pete Doherty
It's much easier, after all, to learn mathematics from someone who's made a few mistakes. It's impossible to learn it from someone who always gets it right.
John C. Lennox
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
Alain de Botton
In my day the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren't available.
Bill Bryson
Lines are very difficult to learn.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.
Idries Shah
Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.
Idries Shah
Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Idries Shah
Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
Terry Pratchett
Take the stupidest thing you've ever done. At least it's done. It's over. It's gone. We can all learn from our mistakes and heal and move on. But it's harder to learn or heal or move on from something that hasn't happened; something we don't know and is therefore indefinable; something which could very easily have been the best thing in our lives, if only we'd taken the plunge, if only we'd held our breath and stood up and done it, if only we'd said yes.
Danny Wallace
One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.
Mary Balogh
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
Samuel Butler
He who laughs most, learns best
John Cleese
For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.
Philip Pullman
Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb Colton
If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
C.S. Lewis
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
Douglas Adams
... he preferred being stimulated to being bored.
Ruth Harris
We sat in silence for a while. I gazed through the window at the night sky, wondering idly at all that space, all that blackness, all that nothing, and as I sat there looking up at the emptiness I began thinking about the creek, the hills, the woods, the water... how everything goes around and around and never really changes. How life recycles everything it uses. How the end product of one process becomes the starting point of another, how each generation of living things depends on the chemicals released by the generations that have proceeded it... I don't know why I was thinking about it. It just seemed to occur to me.
Kevin Brooks
He gazed up at the blue sky and knew that heaven—at least in this life—was neither a time nor a placeto be grasped and made into a possession. It came in fleeting moments and then went away again toleave one nostalgic and yearning and on the verge of tears.Very much on the verge of tears.And very frightened.
Mary Balogh
if you don't have any weird moments, you're weird
bertie gilbert
There would be a lot fewer of us screwing up the game of life so brilliantly, if there was always a right answer instead of just a best--or even a less bad--answer.
Claire Cross
There is a whole lot more to life than winning.
Jojo Moyes
Though riches had charms, poverty had no terrors for an inexperiencedgirl like me. Indeed, to say the truth, there was something exhilaratingin the idea of being driven to straits, and thrown upon our own resources.I only wished papa, mamma, and Mary were all of the samemind as myself; and then, instead of lamenting past calamities we mightall cheerfully set to work to remedy them; and the greater the difficulties,the harder our present privations, the greater should be our cheerfulness to endure the latter, and our vigour to contend against the former.
Anne Brontë
It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise. However, it has needed one: which is about the severest criticism our civilization could have.
Jan Struther
There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.
Mary Stewart
A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'...
Christopher Hitchens
Everything Can Change in One Moment of Time
Debbie Ann Egdell
Never be afraid of the dark side of Vegas, the side the neon and glitter never seem to touch..
Hazim Bangwar
You might be a big fish in a little pond,Doesn't mean you've won'Coz along may come a bigger one.
Coldplay
Love, like everything else, exists in a spectrum. Love of another, love of the world, love of God, all these loves are really one love in different degrees of light and density.
Roger Housden
Really, I protest--what is left for the satirical mind to invent when reality so surpasses it?
Jude Morgan
… one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back – that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street.
Agatha Christie
Isn't it a mercy that we never get cured of being expectant? It makes life so bearable. However regularly we are disappointed and nothing whatever happens, after the first blow has fallen, after the first catch of the breath, the first gulp of misery, we turn our eyes with all their old eagerness to a point a little further along the road.
Elizabeth von Arnim
He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. […] Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect of body or of mind […] The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults.
W Somerset Maugham
You can't live without failing at something, unless you love so cautiously you might as well have nit lived at all, in which case, you fail be default.
J.K. Rowling
I want to stay still and to keep moving. I want this life and another.
Zadie Smith
And she shrank away again, back into her darkness, and for a long while remained blotted safely away from living.
D.H. Lawrence
The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. 'How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think.
Salley Vickers
Screw the right thing to do. What do you want to do?
Beth Reekles
In the end, every man's life is but a tale told to him that's lived it, and to him alone.
Tim Willocks
If life seems jolly rotten, There’s something you’ve forgotten.
Graham Chapman
Life is a brief shot at something incredible
Melanie Gow
Life is too short to be wasted on anything that does not help you to live out God’s plan and purposes for your life.
Elizabeth George
There’s no other way but work, work and work. Read widely, live wildly, plumb the depths of your­self, turn your­self inside out until you find your voice
Claire Meadows
Everything that matters hurts, until it doesn't matter anymore.
Dianna Hardy
I want to be part of the happiness team - let's create the happiness team - from love, not greed, love of life & our planet, true & free.
Jay Woodman
To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
Frances Hodgson Burnett