Quotes by British Authors - Page 547

Nowists are more likely to experience joy because they embrace the uncertainty of existence. They are switched on by the uncertain stuff of human life and come alive when faced with life at its most uncontrollable.
Max McKeown
Seek joyfulness when you can, for seeking joy leads to an auspicious atmosphere.
Jonathan D. Spence
And so silence and ...darkness hold happiness and joy?" he said softly."Assuredly," she said, "provided one listens to the silence and gazes deeply into the darkness. Everything is there. Everything.
Mary Balogh
This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!
C.S. Lewis
I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. ... One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. ... I repeatedly followed that path - to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. ... You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. ... Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.
C.S. Lewis
Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like "feeling obligated to look serious", and he centers his doubts on "what people expect of a clergyman".
George Eliot
In what he suffered, as in all true suffering and in true joy, there was the quality of eternity. He could not believe it would ever end.
Elizabeth Goudge
How wise should we be if, with joyful certainty, we accepted each unfolding of His will as a proof of His faithfulness and love!
Susannah Spurgeon
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.
Virginia Woolf
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
William Blake
Man is a fallen star till he is right with heaven: he is out of order with himself and all around him till he occupies his true place in relation to God. When he serves God, he has reached that point where he doth serve himself best, and enjoys himself most. It is man's honour, it is man's joy, it is man's heaven, to live unto God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I want to thank you for the profound joy I've had in the in the thought of you.
Rosie Alison
All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
C.S. Lewis
As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.
Charlotte Brontë
She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing.
George Orwell
There is nothing dreary or doubtful about (the life). It is meant to be continually joyful...We are called to a settled happiness in the Lord whose joy is our strength.
Amy Carmichael
And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.
J.R.R. Tolkien
I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.
G.K. Chesterton
To rejoice in temporal comforts is dangerous, to rejoice in self is foolish, to rejoice in sin is fatal, but to rejoice in God is heavenly.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.
Frederick William Faber
I've been quite a late developer on the clothes front, but I've suddenly realised it is one of life's joys.
Benedict Cumberbatch
There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.
David Almond
There are souls in this world who have the gift of finding joy everywhere, and leaving it behind them when they go.
Frederick William Faber
And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
C.S. Lewis
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
George Eliot
On with the dance! let joy be unconfin'd
George Gordon Byron
Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily."I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
J.M. Barrie
Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien
J.R.R. Tolkien
Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.
Charles Dickens
Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.
Terry Pratchett
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
Iris Murdoch
I glance down his body. He's still wearing his shorts and his shirt, and I still have my T-shirt on. Jeez-- talk about wham, bam, thank you ma'am.
E.L. James
But you don't fuck me cold-heartedly,' she protested.'I don't want to fuck you at all.'Lady Chatterly's Lover
D.H. Lawrence
You're so... You're too... You're..." He faltered, then took a deep breath. "I have no words for you, Sita. You leave me speechless."I smiled and pinched his buttock so he twitched. "Speechless? Gods, I've broken you. I never would have deemed it possible to render you speechless.
Erica Dakin
The amount of perfume she had on was like a human sacrifice on Incense Night.
Stephen Moles
Is that how you get propositioned at the court? 'Mylady, would you be so kind as to allow me to put my manhood in your vagina'?
Erica Dakin
Miriam - I'll give you any flowers you want!' Rhapsodising over the thousand scents of her body, I exclaimed: 'I'll grow orchids from your hands, roses from your breasts. You can have magnolias in your hair...!''And in my heart?''In your womb I'll set a fly-trap!
J.G. Ballard
It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No. We have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.
Stephen Fry
When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.
N.T. Wright
The two of you are different now, calmer. There is still sex, occasionally, but is no longer a priority to seduce or be seduced by him.
Sarah Hall
The difference between sex with David and sex with Stephen is like the difference between science and art. With Stephen it's all empathy and imagination and exploration and the shock of the new, and the outcome is... uncertain, if you know what I mean. I'm engaged by it, but I', mot necessarily sure what its all about. David, on the other hand, presses this button, then that one, and bingo! It's like operating a lift - just as romantic, but actually just as useful.
Nick Hornby
In our age it is not sex that raises its ugly head, but love.
John Fowles
At night all cats are grey.
George Orwell
For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this phsychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires. Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual. It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with.
Ian Fleming
He didn't say anything and I thought I'd shocked him, because I tend to do that. Not just with Michael but with pretty much anyone who can't deal with being honest and admitting that you have wants and needs and desires and all those other fun things.
Sarra Manning
They had imagined too often and too much and so they had exhausted all their possibilities. When they embraced each other’s phantoms, each in his separate privacy has savoured the most refined of pleasures but, connoisseurs of unreality as they were, they could not bear the crude weight, the rank smell and the ripe taste of real flesh. It is always a dangerous experiment to act out a fantasy; they had undertaken the experiment rashly and had failed…
Angela Carter
I love your body 'cause I've lost my mind If you want someone to talk to, you're wasting your time If you want someone to share your life, you need someone who's alive And if every relationship is a two-way street, I have been screwing in the back whilst you driveI never said I was deep, but I am profoundly shallow My lack of knowledge is vast, and my horizons are narrow I never said I was big, I never said that I was clever And if you're waiting to find what's going on in my mind, you could be waiting forever Forever and everI can dance you to the end of the night 'cause I'm afraid of the dark I have to confess: I'm out of my depth You're going over my head and straight through my heartSome girls like to play it dirty, some girls want to be your mum Me, I disrespected you whilst we were waiting for the taxi to come My morality is shabby, my behaviour unacceptable No, I'm not looking for a relationship, just a willing receptacleI never said I was... I never said I was... I never said I was...I never said I was deep, but I am profoundly shallow My lack of knowledge is vast, and my horizons are narrow Oh, yeah. I never said I was big, I never said that I was clever And if you're waiting to find what's going on in my mind, you could be waiting forever Forever and ever
Jarvis Cocker
When I was 14-15 There was nothing to my lifebut dancing and sexI'd go to night clubs and danceThen I'd meet someone and have sexit was Fine and easynothing to doBUT Think with my bodylike a birdI Thought I was FreeTrAcey Emin
Tracey Emin
Elle Remembered Yorkshire road and the flat he shared with Caitlin and their daughter, and she almost stopped and turned back, and then she hardened herself against it. It's his problem if he wants to sleep with someone and he shouldn't, she told herself. It's a one night thing. I'm in the clear. It's sex, nothing else.
Harriet Evans
Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don't know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another's. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone else. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself.
Tracey Emin
Having the thought of you being with someone else is like a knife twisting in my dark soul
E.L. James
BOLLOXIMIAN:My pleasures for new cunts I will uphold,And have reserves of kindness for the old.I grant in absence dildo may be usedWith milk of goats, when once our seed’s infused.My prick no more to bald cunt shall resort—Merkins rub off, and often spoil the sport.POCKENELLO:Let merkin, sir, be banished from the court.PENE:'Tis like a dead hedge when the land is poor.
John Wilmot
Most modern men want sex and can’t have it. They want success and never get it. They want money and never earn enough. Everybody has desires and nobody—Except the psychopathic few— Has the guts to go out and just take what they want.”—Professor Michael Friday
Barbie Wilde
After an Indian meal they went back to Jamie's flat and Tony did at least two things to him on the sofa that no one had ever done to him before then came back and them again the following evening, and suddenly life became very good indeed.
Mark Haddon
Porn is now so deeply embedded in our culture that it has become synonymous with sex to such a point that to criticize porn is to get slapped with the label anti-sex.…But what if you are a feminist who is pro-sex in the real sense of the word, pro that wonderful, fun, and deliciously creative force that bathes the body in delight and pleasure, and what you are actually against is porn sex? A kind of sex that is debased, dehumanized, formulaic, and generic, a kind of sex not based on individual fantasy, play, or imagination, but one that is the result of an industrial product created by those who get excited not by bodily contact but by market penetration and profits? Where, then, do you fit in the pro-sex, anti-sex dichotomy when pro-porn equals pro-sex?
Gail Dines
A great deal of thought must be given to your daughter's marriage. Otherwise, she will simply slink off like a cat on a dark night to be fertilized under a bush to God knows whom!
J.G. Farrell
...although the reason for the existence of women is obvious enough, nobody has any real idea what point there is in being a man. Men have however, made many attempts to justify their existence.
Steve Jones
The meaning of sex is illustrated by two eponymous heroes of British history, King Edward VII (who flourished in the years before the First World War) and the King Edward variety of potato which has fed the British working class for almost as long). The potato, unlike the royal family, reproduces asexually. Every King Edward potato is identical to every other and each on has the same set of genes as the hoary ancestor of all potatoes bearing that name. This is convenient for the farmer and the grocer, which is why sex is not encouraged among potatoes.
Steve Jones
Biologists have an adolescent fascination with sex. Like teenagers they are embarrassed by the subject because of their ignorance.
Steve Jones
Sex must be important as it is so expensive.
Steve Jones