Quotes by British Authors - Page 507

You can't have a church town without belief and you can't have belief without intolerance.
Howard Jacobson
We've got to believe that God is sane, Davie boy. We'd be lost indeed if we didn't do that.
John Wyndham
It is a world that is made of love. Did you think there is only the kind of love your sister has for her husband? Did you think there must be here, a man with whiskers, and over here, a lady in a gown? Haven't I said, there are no whiskers and gowns where spirits are? And what will your sister do if her husband should die, and she should take another? Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls were torn with another, two halves of the same.
Sarah Waters
One definition occurred to both of them—that he had come out into the light of that lucid and radiant ignorance in which all beliefs had begun. The sky above them was full of mythology. Heaven seemed deep enough to hold all the gods.
G.K. Chesterton
Faith is a state of openness or trust.To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water. You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink. You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging, and holding on.In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
Alan W. Watts
Drought-struck farmers pray for rain, in the express hope that the universe or owner thereof will hear the words and suspense the laws of meteorology for their benefit. Some, of course, actually believe just that, and for all anyone can prove they could be right.
Terry Pratchett
We only set the clocks back and forth in the arrogant belief we have some influence with almighty Time.
Dean Cavanagh
The highest function of humanity is belief, that activity of spirit that proceeds upon the pathway of reason, until it comes to some great promontory, and then spreads its wings, and upon the basis of its earlier journeying, takes eternity into its grasp.
G. Campbell Morgan
I'm a good liar. A great one. And to be a great liar you have to live your lies, to believe them, to the point that when you tell them to yourself enough times, even what's right before your eyes will bend itself to the falsehood.
Mark Lawrence
Genuine surprise is a great help when faced with an unwelcome duty. Of course, when it’s the paying of debts you’re forgetting, that can lead to broken fingers. And worse. I guess it’s a form of lying— lying to oneself. And I’m very good at falsehoods. They often say the best liars half-believe their lies— which makes me the very best because if I repeat a lie often enough I can end up believing it entirely, no half measures involved!
Mark Lawrence
Our group takes what I'll call a Post-Atheist stance. Our position is that god is a creation of human beings, who only exists because of the clap-hands-if-you-believe-in-fairies principle. If enough people were sensible enough not to clap hands, then this Tinker Bell god would die. However, unfortunately, billions of human beings are still prepared to defend their belief in some sort of god-fairy, and, as a result, god exists. What’s worse is that he is now running amok.
Salman Rushdie
You don’t so much as become an atheist as find out that’s what you are. There’s no moment of conversion. You don’t suddenly think ‘I don’t believe this anymore.’ You essentially find you don’t believe it.
Christopher Hitchens
All things that live must die. Man alone it seems lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on – otherwise he is useless. For most men, that purpose revolves around marriage and children who will carry on his seed. For others it is an ideal – a dream, if you like. Each of us here believes in a concept of honor: that it is a man’s duty to do that which is right and just; that might alone is not enough. We have all transgressed at some time. We have stolen, lied, cheated – even killed – for our own ends. But ultimately we return to our beliefs. We judge ourselves more harshly than others can judge us. We know that death is preferable to betrayal of that which we hold dear.
David Gemmell
After all, perhaps dirt isn't really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe.
Agatha Christie
Generate the belief in what you wish to achieve.
Steven Redhead
You are surrounded by endless possibilities with your potential being the sum total of your beliefs.
Steven Redhead
Believing in or trusting fate is akin to gambling.
Steven Redhead
Believe in the potential of obtaining or achieving a desire.
Steven Redhead
We can no longer believe that after death, if we have sinned, we shall enter hell. Hell has been acted out here on Earth in the time of Nazi Germany, when even the innocent went in their millions to a hell that beggars the imagination. A profound change in attitude has come about as a result.
Brian W. Aldiss
Belief is the driver that gives energy and power to achieve your potential.
Steven Redhead
It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don’t understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it’s only incredible. But I’m much more certain it didn’t happen than that Parnell’s ghost didn’t appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand.
G.K. Chesterton
Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?It must be that they believe in their night vision. They believe themselves able to draw images up out of the dark.But black wells only yield black water.
Helen Oyeyemi
I think we all have to believe in something greater than ourselves. Something as distant and magnificent as the stars.
Leila Rasheed
He that believeth that he believe, believeth himself and not God (333)[.]
Richard Baxter
but even if true belief about matters of importance is of intrinsic value, it does not follow that the value of truth should always trump every other value with which it might compete.
Tim Bayne
Civilization is always threatened from below, by patterns of belief and emotion that may once have been useful to our ancestors, but that are useful no longer.
Roger Scruton
You worked at night, when the shadows masked you and you were little more than a dream. You hid in the forest or the mountains, away from the steam engines and the lamps of the cities, the things that would expose you, confirming you and stripping you of your mystery. You showed yourself rarely, and only to the ones who needed to see you. After the free-for-all that was the earlier Chapters, when babies were stolen, young men murdered and maidens locked away, the fae had had to learn to be very careful about their involvement in the lives of the characters, lest they turn still further away from their beliefs.
F.D. Lee
There is no bitterness like that of man who finds out he has been believing in a ghost.
Salman Rushdie
Belief is half of healing.
Patrick Ness
All Egypt is obsessed with death! And do you know why, Renisenb? Because we have eyes in our bodies, but none in our minds. We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation of what we know. We have no real belief in a God.
Agatha Christie
Gods didn’t mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery, atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief …
Terry Pratchett
If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions: he may dream of training even such a person as myself, even poor Parkis, into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it.
Graham Greene
These mental and physical components of self­ belief are closely interlinked. They are used to slowly interweave the per­sonal narratives that very effectively create a powerful sense of identity.
David Amerland
Soar to heights where you may view the world from a new perspective.
Fennel Hudson
Believing can mean something a good deal less than certainty. I believe the bus will come in five minutes, but I can’t be sure. Or sometimes it can mean the kind of knowledge which is acquired after scrupulous review of evidence to build up a cumulative case for some conviction. But believing [as Scripture presents it] is not half-certainty, nor the fruit of mental effort. It’s belief in the deep, strong sense of giving allegiance to something which overwhelms us. To believe in the Lord Jesus…is to do far more than simply give him a passing nod with the mind or even to honor him with our religious devotion. It’s the astonished business of being so overthrown by his reality, so mastered by his sheer presence, so judged by him, that we can do nothing other than acknowledge that he is supremely real, supremely true. To believe in him is to confess him—to affirm with mind and will and heart that he fills all things, that our only hope lies in his name. ¶ Belief in this sense concerns the entire shape of a personal life. It embraces the whole of us. It’s not one department of our life, something in which we engage alongside all the other things we do—working, loving, hoping, creating, worrying, and so on. Believing is about the way in which we dispose the world of our existence. We believe when we’re totally shaped by something outside of us, acknowledging that it has put a decisive stamp on all that we are and all that we do. This is why belief in this deep, strong sense defines us completely: We’re “believers,” doing all that we do out of the inescapable conviction that the Lord Jesus is the persistent factor in the whole of our life. Believing in him, confessing him, involves no less than everything.
John Webster
Our believing has no power of itself; we certainly aren’t saved by belief. We’re saved by the grace and goodness and majesty of him in whom we believe—by the one whom we confess as we believe. In a real sense, our belief is nothing in and of itself. It’s simply a looking to him, a listening to him, in which we are wholly absorbed by that which we see and hear.
John Webster
Polly?' Said Wazzer. 'Yes?''You don't believe in The Duchess, do you? I mean the real Duchess, not your inn.'Polly looked into the small, pinched, intense face. 'Well I mean, they say she's dead, and I prayed to her when I was small, but since you asked I don't exactly, um, believe as-' She gabbled.'She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder.'In the silence of the wood, Polly turned. 'I can't see her,' she said.'I am happy for you,' said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug.'But I didn't see anything,' said Polly.'No,' said Wazzer. 'But you turned around.
Terry Pratchett
I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.’‘Neither do I.’‘Then how can you believe anything at all?’‘I don’t know.
W Somerset Maugham
I did wonder if I'd have cause to rue my action. Now I believe it can safely be filed under Necessary Regrets.
Anthony Ryan
I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one's bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by an act of faith. It was as solid as a wardrobe. You don't have to believe in wardrobes. They are there, with corners. (The Troll)
T.H. White
Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hierarchy and discipline gave shape to the world;that was what he had always believed.Life was made easy by adherence toa rigid structure.But maybe that only really worked when you were at the top of the ladder,when you were doing well.The further down the rungs you went,the more of a victim of circumstances you became and the less it mattered whether or not you were in control.
James Lovegrove
...trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.
Ian Rankin
I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.
A.J. Ayer
But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.
Terry Pratchett
Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.
Terry Pratchett
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One person with a belief is worth 99 people who have only interests.
John Stuart Mill
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Bertrand Russell
I think it's important that people stand up for what they believe in.
Steve Nash
The system loves resistance. Resistance is often creative and it feeds on creativity until the subversive becomes just another pre-packaged lifestyle on special offer. So Cease to Resist. Relax and enjoy the PandaemonAeon. Believe everything and anything. Seek not proof, but take pleasure in your choice of belief. Wipe that superior sneer of your face and try smiling (if only inwardly) at the people/institutions/beliefs that you've waged your personal war against. Wouldn't it be more fun if you didn't run around quite so hard trying to be an individual, or fighting to prove or uphold your chosen belief-system?
Phil Hine
For as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether it’s true or not.
Neil Gaiman
I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)
Christopher Nolan
It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.
Michael Faraday
I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest - a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.
Charlotte Brontë
Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.
Tahir Shah
It is not that I was credulous, simply that I belived in all things dark and dangerous. It was part of my young creed that the night was full of ghosts and witches, hungry and flapping and dressed completely in black.
Neil Gaiman
So little is actually worthy of belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disapprove . . .
David Mitchell
We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
John Henry Newman
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"NO"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN...."Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
Terry Pratchett