Quotes by British Authors - Page 570

I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.
Jeanette Winterson
Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people as friends, enemies, and strangers depending on how they make us feel is both incorrect and a great obstacle to developing impartial love for all living beings. Rather than holding so tightly to our discriminations of the external world, it would be much more beneficial if we learned to discriminate between valuable and worthless states of mind.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .
Charles Dickens
We move between two darknesses.
E.M. Forster
Yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape from here and now.
Virginia Woolf
A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced
Graham Greene
My mind may be sober, but my confidence is high!
Habeeb Akande
Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild.
James Allen
A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.
John Henry Newman
Part of me wanted this more than anything else in the world—to have someone to hang out with, be like everyone else for a while. The rest of me screamed to get the hell out of there, not to get sucked in.
Rachel Ward
I thought about having a proper room,breathing life into it, and nobody minding.
Jenny Valentine
God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.
Walter de la Mare
The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage--who can tell?--buttruth--truth stripped of its cloak of time.
Joseph Conrad
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. Chesterton
The mind of man is capable of anything.
Joseph Conrad
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Terry Pratchett
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
George Orwell
My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It's all in the mind.
George Harrison
God’s beautiful woman spares no effort to provide the best she can for her beloved family.
Elizabeth George
Leave your mark on the world by leaving behind a child who grows up to love and serve the Lord.
Elizabeth George
For God’s sake, man!” Frederick Carlyle bellowed across the room. “At least wait until you’re alone before you kiss her, if you please! Remember, her family is watching you, and we haven’t had our dinner yet!
Stephanie Burgis
Amid the joy of raising children will be some of the hardest work you’ll ever do.
Elizabeth George
...we spend more time gazing at luminous screens than into the eyes of our loved ones.
Charlie Brooker
She had been to her Great-Aunt Willoughby’s before, and she knew exactly what to expect. She would be asked about her lessons, and how many marks she had, and whether she had been a good girl. I can’t think why grownup people don’t see how impertinent these questions are. Suppose you were to answer:“I’m the top of my class, auntie, thank you, and I am very good. And now let us have a little talk about you, aunt, dear. How much money have you got, and have you been scolding the servants again, or have you tried to be good and patient, as a properly brought up aunt should be, eh, dear?”Try this method with one of your aunts next time she begins asking you questions, and write and tell me what she says.
E Nesbit
After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister, and she wouldn't be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster.
Eva Ibbotson
Being Soobie, always honest to himself, he was prepared to be no less than honest to God. – I do not know who made the part of me that thinks. I do not know who I really am or what I really am. I am never satisfied to pretend. I cannot pretend that you are listening to me. I can only give you the benefit of the doubt. And it is a massive doubt, I can tell you. I do not know whether I believe in you, and, what is worse, you might not believe in me. But I need help and there is nowhere else to turn. The flesh-and-blood people who come here have something they called faith. Please, if you are listening to a rag doll with a blue face, let the faith of those others be enough for you to help me. I must find my sister, or my mother will be the first of us to die. Dear God, I don’t even know what that means!
Sylvia Waugh
To last, a marriage and family must be built on love—love for God, and love for one another.
Elizabeth George
When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, of a family line, connection. All around him, men were walking silently with their thoughts, reforming their lives, making resolutions. If I ever get out of this lot... They could never be counted, the dreamed-up children, mentally conceived on the walk into Dunkirk, and later made flesh.
Ian McEwan
We both lacked the same thing in our childhoods - the love of a father... We both sought to fill that lack in our adult lives with family and love, as everyone does, but also with thrills and sometimes periods of recklessness. Luckily, I have always come back from my recklessness. Tommy Darling did not.
Alan Cumming
There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighborhoods, in different areas of the country - and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months... even years at a time. But if there's love, dear... those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever.
Anne Fine
I may have spent long enough in your orbit to have absorbed your ferocious conviction that a happy family cannot be a mere myth or that even if it is, better to die trying for the fine if unattainable than sulking in passive, cynical resignation that hell is other people you're related to.
Lionel Shriver
I am not a fairy godmother or anything of that sort, but I hope to give you a happy home and a good education, and to send you out into the world true, brave, generous men, prepared to serve God truly all the days of your life."~Aunt Persis
Constance Savery
Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate;—and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.
Jane Austen
Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you'd be okay.
Jojo Moyes
The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
Dodie Smith
A question that always makes me hazy is it me or are the others crazy'Albert Einstein
Victoria Ward
I liked the fact that I could be who I wanted to be without my sister's voice reminding me of who I had been.
Jojo Moyes
Aliena's brother, Richard, sometimes reminded her of her father, with a look or a gesture, and that was when she felt a surge of affection.
Ken Follett
It pleased Aliena that they were all together: she and Jack and their children, and Jack's mother, and Aliena's brother, and Martha. It was quite like an ordinary family, and Aliena could almost forget that her father had died in a dungeon, and she was legally married to Jack's stepbrother, and Ellen was an outlaw, and—She shook her head. It was no use pretending this was a normal family.
Ken Follett
This is George, my beloved George. D'you think I want to go to my grave knowing that at the moment of his trial he looked around and saw no one lift a finger for him? If it is the death of me, I shall go to him.""Go then," he said. "Kiss our baby good-bye before you go, and Henry. I shall tell Catherine that you left your blessing for her. And kiss me farewell. For if you go into that courtroom you will never come out alive.
Philippa Gregory
He is my brother," I said. "I cannot desert him.""You can go to your own death," William said. "Or you can survive this, bring up your children, and guard Anne's little girl who will be shamed and bastardized and motherless by the end of this week. You can wait out this reign and see what comes next. See what the future holds for the Princess Elizabeth, defend our son Henry against those who will want to set him up as the king's heir or even worse-flaunt him as a pretender. You owe it to your children to protect them.
Philippa Gregory
All through dinner Arturo and I held hands under the table like a couple of kids, and that made the dinner quite wonderful, even though Mrs. Fletcher kept staring at Olivia as though committing her to memory. It got so bad that Olivia turned to her husband and said: "Has it happened at last, Gerald? Have I become a curiosity?
Helen Oyeyemi
The fact is that blaming doesn't get you anywhere. It keeps you stuck. Blaming stops you from moving on with your life.
Jane Green
You sure you want to come with me?” I said. “The odds are not good.” “We’re family,” said Suzie. I had to smile. “I haven’t been all that lucky when it comes to family.” “We’re the family you chose,” said Dead Boy. “The family that matters.
Simon R. Green
I do not dance,' said Jean-Claude, who had forsworn that exercise for much the same reasons as Miss Stevenson.But here he spoke too soon, for Lady Dorothy Bingham, merciless to what she called 'ballroom skulkers', saw him standing about, ordered John to introduce him to her, and became his patroness.Not till he had miserably danced twice with her and once with each of the twins did he have the brilliant idea of introducing her to his mother. The master minds met, and recognised each other, and for the greater part of the evening they discussed the care and subjugation of a family...
Angela Thirkell
Fame, infamy, they're of the same family.
Gemma Malley
It takes more than wings to release one from the bonds of kinship.
Betsy Tobin
The people in your life should always be more important than the work you do.
C.S. Woolley
You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid.
Helen Simonson
In many ways my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that.
Lucy Foley
Soul SisterEvoking all my inner goodnesswith bastions of timeI cradle your heartsisterly into mine...
Muse
Butterfly KissesAged imperfectionsstitched upon my faceyears and years of wisdomearned by His holy grace.Quiet solitude in a humble homeall the family scattered nowlike nomads do they roam.Then a giftsent from abovea memorypure and tangiblewrapped in innocence andunquestioning love.A butterfly kisslands gently upon my cheekfrom an unseen childa kiss most sweet.Heaven grants graceand tears followas youth revisitsthis empty hollow.
Muse
PartingOne is strong, a child now grownThe other weak, a parent aged-The strong once feebleThe weak once mighty-Time, the infinityhas marked them...
Muse
The world is constantly evolving, while the family endeavours to stay the same. Updated, refurbished, modernised, but essentially the same. A house in the landscape, both shelter and prison.
Rachel Cusk
I guess there's a Use By date when it comes to blaming your parents for how messed up you are.I guess that's what turning eighteen means.Time to own it.
Nathan Filer
Eva: I don't want any tea.
Lil: Don’t make me have it on my own.
Diane Samuels
Yeah, my parents are crappy, but you hurt either of my sisters and I will spend my life finding ways to destroy you.
Patrick Ness
The Death Eaters were waiting for us,” Harry told her. “We were surrounded the moment we took off — they knew it was tonight — I don’t know what happened to anyone else, four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort caught up with us —”He could hear the self-justifying note in his voice, the plea for her to understand why he did not know what had happened to her sons, but —“Thank goodness you’re all right,” she said, pulling him into a hug he did not feel he deserved.“Haven’t go’ any brandy, have yeh, Molly?” asked Hagrid a little shakily. “Fer medicinal purposes?”She could have summoned it by magic, but as she hurried back toward the crooked house, Harry knew that she wanted to hide her face.
J.K. Rowling
...there was alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him.
Thomas Hardy