Quotes by British Authors - Page 583

my first recommendation to people in charge of science education is, more money for public libraries and museums. Public libraries and museums ought to be as common as schools.
Freeman Dyson
Hi, Albert,” Quinn called back. He seemed distracted. And Albert was sure that he’d seen Quinn motion for someone to stay down.“How long is this supposed to go on?” Albert asked.“Until we get justice,” Quinn said.“Justice? People have been waiting for justice since the dinosaurs.”Quinn said nothing and Albert cursed himself for indulging in sarcasm. “What is it you want, Quinn? I mean in practical terms.”“We want Penny gone,” Quinn said.“I can’t afford to pay you any more,” Albert shouted back.“I didn’t say anything about money,” Quinn said, sounding puzzled.“Yeah, I know: justice. Usually what people really want is money. So why don’t we get down to it?”“Penny,” Quinn said. “She leaves town. She stays gone. When that happens we fish. Until it happens, we sit.” He sat down as if to emphasize his point.
Michael Grant
Money solves nothing but it eases everything.
Santa Montefiore
Mankind's obsession with money and greed has them going down a one way street to their demise.
Steven Magee
Your husband certainly love money,' she said. 'That is no lie Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money pretty like pretty self, he can't see nothing else.
Jean Rhys
That’s the thing,” she said. “You add on getting rid of starvation and poverty like it’s a fringe benefit. Like the slice of lemon you get with a plate of whitebait.” He laughed. “That’s why I succeed,” he said, “where the men with beautiful souls always fail. If you walk through the market asking the stallholders to give you a slice of lemon for free, they’d laugh in your face. Pay for the whitebait and you get a good meal of whitebait for your money, plus the free lemon.
K.J. Parker
I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life or the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.
Jeanette Winterson
Would the world be better off without people or would people be better off without money?
Anthony T.Hincks
Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart into you? Invention, energy, wit, style, charm--they've all got to be paid for in hard cash.
George Orwell
Sharply the menacing wind sweeps overThe bending poplars, newly bare,And the dark ribbons of the chimneysVeer downward; flicked by whips of air.Torn posters flutter; coldly soundThe boom of trams and the rattle of hooves,And the clerks who hurry to the stationLook, shuddering, over the eastern rooves,Thinking, each one, "Here comes the winter!"Please God I keep my job this year!"And bleakly, as the cold strikes throughTheir entrails like an icy spear,They think of rent, rates, season tickets,Insurance, coal, the skivvy's wages,Boots, school-bills and the next installmentUpon the two twin beds from Drage's.For if in careless summer daysIn groves of Ashtaroth we whored,Repentant now, when winds blow cold,We kneel before our rightful lord;The lord of all, the money-god,Who rules us blood and hand and brain,Who gives the roof that stops the wind,And, giving, takes away again;Who spies with jealous, watchful care,Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways,Who picks our words and cuts our clothes,And maps the pattern of our days;Who chills our anger, curbs our hope.And buys our lives and pays with toys,Who claims as tribute broken faith,Accepted insults, muted joys;Who binds with chains the poet's wit,The navvy's strength, the soldier's pride,And lays the sleek, estranging shieldBetween the lover and his bride.
George Orwell
Being a billionaire helps when you live in a slum and have to eat scraps of food and drink dirty water.
Anthony T.Hincks
The thing about 'colour' is that it's not all about the money or the prestige, but it's about showing what life is all about. Without it...
Anthony T.Hincks
She'd stolen my car.She'd stolen my dog.She'd stolen all my money.But if she had only asked, I would have given her it all, because when I first met her, she'd stolen my heart.
Anthony T.Hincks
The creed of greed:Great Revenue Every Everlasting Day.(IN BANKS WE TRUST)
Anthony T.Hincks
When you give a present,you're giving with your heart.Never give thinking of money,or your gift will fall apart.
Anthony T.Hincks
Why be greedy when you can have it all.
Anthony T.Hincks
..each ministry has an allocation of money to spend on projects agreed to by the government. Every Secretary of State is acutely aware that his tenure of office maybe very short, so he picks out a major contract for himself from the many available. It's the one way to ensure a pension for life if the government is changed overnight or the minister simply loses his job.
Jeffrey Archer
Funny how money speaks even more loudly than morals in this beautiful, superficial material world.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
If you make everything solely about money you end up with a very poor society.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way.
Angela Carter
Without money and without connections- I have failed you!
Jude Morgan
An old liar told me hereTo think ahead and save my money.I should have spent it on ribbons.I should have learned the tune my dead grandfather playedWhen the daft wife heard him resoundingIn the deep pine woods in early November.
Menzies McKillop
And the great thing about money is that it doesn’t matter when you harvest it. It’s an all-year crop.
Robert Harris
Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it's mercenary of me, but there it is
Agatha Christie
The money… will talk?' said Mr Spools carefully.'Imps,' said Moist. 'They're only a sort of intelligent spell. They don't even have to have a shape. We'll print them on the higher denominations.
Terry Pratchett
Did you find anything special?' Blackie asked.T. nodded. 'Come over here,' he said, 'and look.' Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. 'Old Misery's savings,' he said. 'Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.''What are you going to do? Share them?''We aren't thieves,' T. said. 'Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me - a celebration.' He knelt down on the floor and counted them out - there were seventy in all. 'We'll burn them,' he said, 'one by one,' and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. 'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through,' T. said.'You hate him a lot?' Blackie asked.'Of course I don't hate him,' T. said. 'There'd be no fun if I hated him.' The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. 'All this hate and love,' he said, 'it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie,' and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. 'I'll race you home, Blackie,' he said. ("The Destructors")
Graham Greene
Any flights would be taken business class, since Roger thought that the whole point of having money, if it had to be summed up in a single point, which it couldn't, but if you had to, the whole point of having a bit of money was not to have to fly scum class.
John Lanchester
Look at a coin from your pocket. On one side is "heads" - the symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the other side is "tails" - the precise specification of the amount the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds us that states underwrite currencies and the money is originally a relation between persons in society, a token perhaps. The other reveals the coin as a thing, capable of entering into definite relations with other things.
Keith Hart
Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent.
Tahir Shah
What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things, a civilisation torn and unable sensibly to adjudicate between the worthwhile ends to which money might be put and the often morally trivial and destructive mechanisms of its generation.
Alain de Botton
America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4,000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again.Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback.
Bill Bryson
NAUGHTY AND NICE? said Death. BUT IT'S EASY TO BE NICE IF YOU'RE RICH. IS THIS FAIR?Albert wanted to argue. He wanted to say, Really? In that case, how come so many of the rich buggers is bastards? And being poor don't mean being naughty, neither.
Terry Pratchett
After all, as Franco would dictate, everyone was going to lose their money at some point. You may as well do so half drunk and at the mercy of a pretty smile.
Christopher Byford
How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?
H. Rider Haggard
When we care about people, we care less about money, and when we care about money, we care less about people.
Margaret Heffernan
Money is just one of the forces that blind us to information and issues which we could pay attention to - but don't. It exacerbates and often rewards all the other drivers of willful blindness; our preference for the familiar, our love for individuals and for big ideas, a love of busyness and our dislike of conflict and change, the human instinct to obey and conform and our skill at displacing and diffusing responsibility. All of these operate and collaborate with varying intensities at different moments in our lives. The common denominator is that they all make us protect our sense of self-worth, reducing dissonance and conferring a sense of security, however illusory. In some ways, they all act like money; making us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. We wouldn't be so blind if our blindness didn't deliver rewards; the benefit of comfort and ease.
Margaret Heffernan
In treating people as less important than things, work becomes both demoralised and demoralising and we become blind to the moral content of our decisions...Money and wilfful blindness make us act in ways incompatible wiht what believe our ethics to be, and often even with our own self-interest...the problem with money isn't fundamentally about greed, although it can be comforting to think so. The problem with money is that we live in societies in which mutual support and co-operation is essential, but money erodes the relationships we need to lead productive, fulfilling and genuinely happy lives. When money becomes the dominant behavior, it doesn't cooperate with, or amplify, our relationships; it disengages us from them.
Margaret Heffernan
England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.
Mary Wollstonecraft
I tell you, money can't build your spire for you. Build it of gold and it would simply sink deeper.
William Golding
Haven't you enough money?'For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five.
Stella Gibbons
At only ten a.m., Edgar found himself already eyeing the Doritos on the counter. One thing he hadn't anticipated about the 'home office' was Snack Syndrome; lately his mental energies divided evenly between his new calling (worrying about money, which substituted neatly for earning it) and not stuffing his face.
Lionel Shriver
People write for ego gratification, not money.
Deborah Meyler
But it is only people who have plenty of money who can despise it. To the rest of us it is important. It can at least put food in our stomachs clothes on our backs, and it can at least feed our dreams.
Mary Balogh
Nothing knits man to man like the frequent passage from hand to hand of cash.
Walter Sickert
It is everyone's bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin' you try to make it into four shillin' . . . there is no end to it.
Barry Unsworth
Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck and money; stories and fantasies about rock stars and film stars, sporting millionaires and models; jet-setting members of the aristocracy and international financiers.
James Kelman
When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it's not, and I need to do it again.(Confessions of a Shopaholic-the movie)
Sophie Kinsella
When one is grown up, money is lying about at one's service. It is only when one is young that it is rare. Take no thought for money - that always lies to hand.(Women in Love)
D.H. Lawrence
The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum by 145,000, making one pound seem like 145,000 pounds to a one-year-old. At seven – Bertie’s age – the multiplier is 24, so that five pounds seems like 120 pounds. At the age of twenty four, five pounds is five pounds; at forty five it is divided by 5, so that it seems like one pound and one pound seems like twenty pence. (All figures courtesy of Scottish Government Advice Leaflet: Handling your Money.)
Alexander McCall Smith
People in that crowd want to make poverty history, but NOT if they have to pay for it themselves
Ben Elton
Powerful to alleviate, to delay, to camouflage, though money is, in the end it lets us down.
Caryll Houselander
...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.
Jhumpa Lahiri
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
G.K. Chesterton
The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
Katherine Whitehorn
Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.
Charles Dickens
Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.
George Orwell
Our income are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and trip.
Charles Caleb Colton
The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.
George Orwell
Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.
William Makepeace Thackeray
I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know).
Anthony Hope