Quotes by British Authors - Page 577

The love of Arda was set in your hearts by Ilúvatar, and he does not plant to no purpose.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Once upon a time there was war, and starvation, and death. Once upon a time we would kill our brothers and sisters, fearing for our own lives. Once upon a time the characters turned from us, and we wept. Now we do not war, nor do we fear, nor do we weep. We Redact.
F.D. Lee
It is dangerous to become attached to a du Lac. He will break your heart, and you will not recover.
Mary Anne Yarde
Death drives desire.
Rosemary A. Johns
This is what a castle sounded like when it died, and he knew he would never forget it.
Steven Poore
Here's a tragedy for you. Arca the Brave, one of the last heroes of Cape Magister, the man who held the line at the Usurper's Fields, who saw even the mighty Guhl fall and die... now he sleeps on my floor and begs for scraps like a dog. Perhaps there are some wars that are not worth fighting.
Steven Poore
It was a Guild of Assassins, after all. Black was what you wore. The night was black and so were you. And black had such style, and an Assassin without style, everyone agreed, was just a highly paid arrogant thug.
Terry Pratchett
How can we learn the value of saying no, if we didn’t occasionally say yes?
F.D. Lee
Mistasinon stood as the music of life flowed around him, the instrument of his agency muted.
F.D. Lee
She was here and the world, for so long ugly and deformed, was all at once itself again. She was taking a glass of sweet wine from one of the waiters. She was smiling. She was breathing. She was here. She was an island of such colossal importance within a sea of inconsequence that it seemed impossible the Ball was able to continue its empty existence.
F.D. Lee
The woman above him had tumbled out of his dreams, and now stood like a half-waking ghost, a photograph double exposed, showing him in one moment the fallacy of his past as it bled into his future. The image of Maria Sophia had grown too large for him to bear. He had made it so. In his industry and creativity he had transformed her into something so wonderful that the very fact she might now be anything less terrified him almost as much as the prospect she might exceed it.
F.D. Lee
You don’t approve?” Joan asked, picking up on Delphine’s tone. “Their stories were for themselves, not the Mirrors.”“What do you mean?” said Bea.“Certainly sometimes a good little character would find a lamp, and would not be so corrupted by the strangely endless possibilities of three wishes that they ended up causing more harm than they ever imagined. Those stories fostered belief, they were retold, certainly; but they were few and far between. Most of the genie’s tales showed the characters exactly who they really were, not when they were despised and degraded, not when they’d reached the gutter and been given licence to look at the stars. No, the genies showed them who they were when they were invincible. The characters, they try to forget stories like that.
F.D. Lee
There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Never accept help from a dragon. Dragons do not offer help. They offer fate.
Steven Poore
We’re to be married. Does it matter if I permit it?”“To me it does, yes,” says Merek. “And I imagine you, like me, appreciate the illusion of having a choice, even when illusion is all it is.
Melinda Salisbury
But I want you,” he smiles at me. “Not just to make me a king. I’ve always wanted you. Despite it all, you are still the bride I would choose. I do choose you.
Melinda Salisbury
I’ve learned that being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Once I was surrounded by people and lonely for it, but now I’m alone and I’ve never been so content.
Melinda Salisbury
Forgive me again.” He lifts the carafe and refreshes his goblet. “What happened to those two children who laughed at dandelion fuzz?” he says softly. “Are they gone forever, do you think?
Melinda Salisbury
What are you dreams, Twylla?”“I – I have none. I have all I want.”“I don’t believe that. You must have some dreams – everyone does.” “I want…I want to be happy,” I say, realizing at once that it’s a stupid thing to say. But to my surprise he’s nodding, a smile tugging at his lips. “I want to be happy too.
Melinda Salisbury
Have a scaffold erected in the square. We shall hang a traitor or two before dinner. And perhaps afterwards as well.” - Princess Karena
Thaddeus White
Have a scaffold erected in the square. We shall hang a traitor or two before dinner. And perhaps afterwards as well.
Thaddeus White
Duncan yawned and scratched at a spot on his temple. “According to my reckoning, you shall be punished thusly. Hanged twice, for major theft and unlawfully slaying a beast in the Comte’s forest. Lashed… let me see… four hundred and twenty-seven times for adultery, fornication and minor theft. Lastly, imprisoned for tax evasion and rigging boxing matches for,” the lieutenant paused and totted up the list of offences, “Ninety-six years.”Roger the Goat nodded gravely, and asked, “In what order?
Thaddeus White
No m’lord. It wouldn’t be a secret army if we had seen it. My squire, who has not had the opportunity to be clearly informed about the presence of a secret army, has been ignorant of its existence.
Gary Edward Gedall
enter the world of things as they are
Neil Gaiman
This reminds Faron of those stupid dogs that people put in their cars, that when the car moves, the dogs frantically nod their heads, like some demented, freshly graduated psychologist, with their first patients.
Gary Edward Gedall
I have had as many names as there are years to time itself! roared the monster. I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!
Patrick Ness
I ate and read my book, this particular kind of fantasy novel that I secretly loved. It was my favorite thing to do– eat and read. The world just shut up for a while.
Laure Eve
Wells is teaching us to think. Burroughs and his lesser imitators are teaching us not to think. Of course, Burroughs is teaching us to wonder. The sense of wonder is in essence a religious state, blanketing out criticism. Wells was always a critic, even in his most wondrous and romantic tales.And there, I believe, the two poles of modern fantasy stand defined. At one pole wait Wells and his honorable predecessors such as Swift; at the other, Burroughs and the commercial producers, such as Otis Adelbart Kline, and the weirdies, and horror merchants such as H.P. Lovecraft, and so all the way past Tolkien to today's non-stop fantasy worlders. Mary Shelley stands somewhere at the equator of this metaphor.
Brian W. Aldiss
A bad conscience makes a very good ghost.
Hope Mirrlees
There had always been something rather brutal about (..._) common sense.
Hope Mirrlees
But these are sad times, the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty little urchin thinking he can giveimpudence to his betters!
Hope Mirrlees
Let mental suffering be intense enough, and it becomes a sort of carminative.
Hope Mirrlees
Sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the slightest influence on action.
Hope Mirrlees
Mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones.
Hope Mirrlees
Further, deeper still, those whose true names are for ever hidden from the world picked up the pattern of vibrations in the ether, and something akin to joy stirred in their fathomless minds. Perhaps soon they would be called upon to feed.
Marc Gascoigne
The creature was there, a curiously shaped creature no doubt, but all loathing had vanished clean out of his mind, so that neither then nor at any other time could he remember it, nor ever understand again why one should quarrel with an animal for having more legs or eyes than oneself.
C.S. Lewis
All that is gold does not glitter,Not all those who wander are lost;The old that is strong does not wither,Deep roots are not reached by the frost.J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien
I did wonder if there really was such a person as Aslan: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are.
C.S. Lewis
All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.
Neil Gaiman
You totally ruined my life, you know that?' said Rincewind hotly. 'I could have really made it as a wizard if you hadn't decided to use me as a sort of portable spellbook. I can't remember any other spells, they're all too frightened to stay in the same head as you!
Terry Pratchett
Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower toward the Library.Towards where the Library had been. There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot.Rincewind stood and stared for a long time. Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of bookcase still smouldered. Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backward and forward across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength. They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing.Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft. The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down. There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas. He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for some time until the end fell off.Then he ate it.
Terry Pratchett
Men who are certain of everything - well perhaps they are not men at all.
Mark Lawrence
There was a moment of hesitation, and then her mouth opened against his, and her tongue slid into his mouth, and he was, under the strange stars, utterly, irrevocably lost.
Neil Gaiman
Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone.
J.R.R. Tolkien
True courage is knowing not when to take a life, but to save one.
J.R.R. Tolkien
I think there comes a point when the outcome of a battle is inevitable but the fighting has not ended. Then the enemy becomes exhaustion and pain. A common enemy. Does the soldier holding in his entrails and facing the death reaper, care any longer what he fought for?” said Quain.(From The General's Legacy)
Adrian G. Hilder
What is across there? Lykos said.Death, whatever that is. Said Calidus.
John Gwynne
I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving.I know a charm that will heal with a touch.I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy.I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks.A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it.A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender.A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it.An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship.A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore.For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again.An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes.A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers.A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle.A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them.A fifteenth: I had a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe in my dreams.A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman.A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another.And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one know but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.
Neil Gaiman
As the dry thirst for water, the starving hunger for food and lungs demand air to breathe, the one thing a soul truly craves is freedom.
Adrian G. Hilder
Patience is all that I have had for fifteen years, more grey hairs, rotted teeth and the continuing decline of my Kingdom my only reward. Patience, Magnar, has overdue debts to be paid.(King Klonag)
Adrian G. Hilder
Lettie shrugged. “Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.
Neil Gaiman
Sirius was a brave, clever, and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger.
J.K. Rowling
Morning and eveningMaids heard the goblins cry:'Come buy our orchard fruits,Come buy, come buy
Christina Rossetti
But have a care! It is a bitter blade, and steel serves only those that can wield it. It will cut your hand as willingly as aught else.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Even the broken will fight
D.P.Prior
Farther down the riverbank sat a young man dressed all in white. He was the only person in sight. His hair was white, his skin chalk pale, and he sat and stared up and down the river, as if he were admiring the view. He looked like how Victorian Romantic poets looked just before the consumption and drug abuse really started to cut it." --Good Omens pg.191-192
Terry Pratchett
He threw the knife at Karian’s face, deliberately catching his temple. “Sons of Kings shouldn’t play with sharp toys.
Tracey-anne McCartney
NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESENGERS ABOT THEIR DUTY
Terry Pratchett
The reality of life is that we are all living someone else's dream. Now that's everyone's fantasy.
Anthony T.Hincks
Only in Xanth would parents see a dragon looming over their children and depart with confidence.
Piers Anthony