Quotes by British Authors - Page 62

God seems to have the receiver off the hook.
Arthur Koestler
The man who fails because he aims astray or because he does not aim at all is to be found everywhere.
Frank Swinnerton
The great business of life is to be to do to do without and to depart.
John Morley
There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith
I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who by all laws of logic should never have made it. At each stage of my career I lacked the experience.
Audrey Hepburn
The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life discerns his object and toward that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.
Joanna Field
True happiness we are told consists in getting out of one's self but the point is not only to get out you must stay out and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
Henry James
What our deepest self craves is not mere enjoyment but some supreme purpose that will enlist all our powers and give unity and direction to our life.
Henry J. Golding
A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows.
John Powell
Man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in aim at earth and you get neither.
C.S. Lewis
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.
Doris Lessing
Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
Edward Young
Aim at perfection in everything though in most things it is unattainable. However they who aim at it and persevere will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
Lord Chesterfield
Unless in one thing or another we are straining toward perfection we have forfeited our manhood.
Stephen McKenna
People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.
Margaret Thatcher
Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
G.K. Chesterton
The true object of human life is play.
G.K. Chesterton
What does so-called success or failure matter if only you have succeeded in doing the thing you set out to do. The doing is all that really counts.
Eva Le Gallienne
The business of life is to enjoy oneself everything else is a mockery.
Norman Douglas
I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure as a test of value.
Rebecca West
All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end although it shifts with every variation of the weathercock and assumes ten different positions in a day.
Charles Caleb Colton
He who wishes to fulfill his mission in the world must be a man of one idea one great overmastering purpose overshadowing all his aims and guiding and controlling his entire life.
Julius Bate
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
Lord Chesterfield
The man who seeks one thing in life and but one May hope to achieve it before life be done. But he who seeks all things wherever he goes Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows A harvest of barren regrets.
Owen Meredith
When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning it satisfies the senses amazingly.
Virginia Woolf
The streams which would otherwise diverge to fertilize a thousand meadows must be directed into one deep narrow channel before they can turn a mill.
Anna Jameson
You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it.
Dorothy L. Sayers
If you just set out to be liked you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and you would achieve nothing.
Margaret Thatcher
In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as they tie their cravats there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.
George Eliot
To have no set purpose in one's life is the harlotry of the will.
Stephen McKenna
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
G.K. Chesterton
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
Hannah More
Men like nails lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor
To grow and know what one is growing towards-that is the source of all strength and confidence in life.
James Baillie
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose-a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
He is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment... when he is consumed in the service of an idea in the conquest of the goal pursued.
R. Briffault
Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Winston Churchill
Give way to the Better if way to the Better there be It exacts a full look at the Worst.
Thomas Hardy
Every ceiling when reached becomes a floor upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
Aldous Huxley
Rock of Ages cleft for me Let me hide myself in thee.
Augustus Toplady
He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind.
Alexander Pope
God's in His Heaven - All's right with the world!
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
Nearer my God to Thee - Nearer to Thee - E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me Still all my song shall be Nearer my God to Thee Nearer to Thee!
Sarah Flower Adams
One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.
Walter Scott
Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.
George Eliot
He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.
William Blake
What we make is more important than what we are particularly if making is our profession.
Dorothy L. Sayers
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection fears doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
Joseph Conrad
Every action we take everything we do is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.
Anne Brontë
One of these days is none of these days.
H. G. Bohn
Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson
Do not wait for ideal circumstances nor the best opportunities they will never come.
Janet Erskine Stuart
What you theoretically know vividly realize.
Francis Thompson
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
Stanley Kubrick
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.
G.K. Chesterton
One's feelings waste themselves in words they ought all to be distilled into action ... which bring results.
Florence Nightingale