Quotes by British Authors - Page 511

Déjà vu is simply remembrance of the future.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
When we live in the past, there is no future.
Anthony T.Hincks
Many past mistakes paves the road to future discoveries.
Steven Magee
Think of the future, she whispers. Jumbled images in primary colours. White and red swastika flags waving in the wind; gleaming rockets flying into the air; skyscrapers rise above the Danube, the Thames, the Volga and the Rhine, blond children play under a bright African sun, their uniforms ironed to perfection by their servant-slaves nearby, modern women work at factories assembling Volkswagens, in the mountains in a wood cabin Maria and Erich and their three children go on a skiing holiday, laughing, holding hands…
Lavie Tidhar
We have annexed the future into our present as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us
J.G. Ballard
...[Y]ou cannot successfully navigate the future unless you keep always framed beside it a small clear image of the past.
Jan Struther
The future offers everything. Reach out and take whatever you want.
Rosie Thomas
The past, present, and future, were all equally in gloom.
Jane Austen
It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.
Terry Eagleton
How grand, to be a Doctor of whatever and to weigh up and decide people's future.
Sebastian Faulks
I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant past: I am so sure that everything we now take for granted is going to be utterly swept away in the next d
Doris Lessing
The ultimate concept car will move so fast, even at rest, as to be invisible.
J.G. Ballard
There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learned to separate them.
J.D. Bernal
There were certain moments upon which the whole of the future course of one's life might turn. And almost inevitably they popped out at one without any warning at all, leaving one with no time to consider or engage in a reasoned debate with oneself. One had to make a split second decision, and much depended upon it. Perhaps everything.
Mary Balogh
I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever discover it-- at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?
Thomas Hardy
In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.
George Orwell
No course was open to me save to leap, with eyes self-bound, into the yawning abyss of the future.
William Beckford
He knew that all the hazards and perils were now drawing together to a point: the next day would be a day of doom, the day of final effort or disaster, the last gasp.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Have you noticed," she asked him, "how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips by quiet unnoticed?
Mary Balogh
Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
Winston S. Churchill
We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.
George Orwell
You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream.
C.S. Lewis
Everywhere I looked, demons of the future [were] on the battlegrounds of one’s emotional plane.
David Bowie
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan
You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.
E.M. Forster
Perhaps a wiser eye than hers would be able to read tomorrow in tonight's stars, but where was the fun in that? It was better not to know. Better to be alive in the Here and the Now--in this bright, laughing moment--and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.
Clive Barker
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.
George Orwell
What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past.
Graham Swift
Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture.
Simon Pegg
Well, we must wait for the future to show.
Virginia Woolf
People do this a lot. They don't seem to realise that the future is just like now, but in a little while, so they say they're going to do things in anticipation of some kind of seismic shift in their worldview that never actually materialises. But everything's not going to be made of leather, the world won't stink of sherbet. Tomorrow is not some mythical kingdom where you'll grow butterfly wings and be able to talk to animals - you'll basically feel pretty much the same way you do at the moment.
Russell Brand
The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
Zadie Smith
I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.
Alan Moore
You can't do anything about the past, it's done and can't be mended. But the future is different, if you just think what you really want and reach out and take it.
Lesley Pearse
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
Winston S. Churchill
The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.
C.S. Lewis
But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be.
Elizabeth Gaskell
And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.
Mark Haddon
People don't realize that the future is just now, but later.
Russell Brand
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
George Eliot
I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.
Doris Lessing
No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by.
Charlotte Brontë
I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.
Arthur C. Clarke
It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.
H.G.Wells
The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.
Beryl Markham
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.
George Orwell
The past is always tense, the future perfect.
Zadie Smith
Public Utility Commission (PUC), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaints are rarely upheld. It is estimated that less than 5% of complaints are successful and that the actual number may be below 1% in some cases.
Steven Magee
If at first you don’t succeed, then maybe you have the wrong idea of success, or you’re using the wrong standard of measuring it.
Tristan Sherwin
There was a monster in me that had to be fed by success. There is a monster in us all that has to be fed by something.
Chloe Thurlow
Understanding one's purpose is the key to success.
Steven Redhead
Too ridged an image of how things should be can completely scuttle any potential success.
Steven Redhead
You don't become a success by breaking the rules. You don't become a success by obeying the rules. You become a success by inventing the rules.
Chloe Thurlow
Persistence is always rewarded with success.
Steven Redhead
Successful people never forget what they love to do and are passionate about. They quickly learn to follow their own path and to make the right choices, no matter how crazy or unpopular they might appear to others. Just look at Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, who quit studying at a prestigious university to pursue his dreams.
Nigel Cumberland
Welcome to Hollywood. Here you can be whatever you want! That's the secret of American success! Fake it till you make it!
Lily Amis
Time is the only actual true barrier to success.
Steven Redhead
When setbacks arise - and they will from time to time - regroup, recharge, refocus and refine.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Your consistency says a lot about your commitment.
Rasheed Ogunlaru