Quotes by British Authors - Page 63

Can anything be sadder than work unfinished? Yes work never begun.
Christina Rossetti
Life is essentially a series of events to be lived through rather than intellectual riddles to be played with and solved.
George A. Buttrick
This is a world of action and not for moping and droning in.
Charles Dickens
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action and they will have it if they cannot find it.
George Eliot
You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge one for yourself.
James A. Froude
The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Do noble things do not dream them all day long.
Charles Kingsley
To always be intending to live a new life but never to find time to set about it this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another till he is starved and destroyed.
John Tillotson
Few begin with anything like a clear view of what they want to do and the fortune they seek may come in a very different form from that which they have kept in view.
The Independent
If we really want to live we'd better start at once to try.
W.H. Auden
The important thing is somehow to begin.
Henry Moore
The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.
Hannah Moore
Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?
Norman Douglas
To do anything in this world worth doing we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Sydney Smith
Act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done by hesitation.
Thomas Henry Huxley
To know what has to be done then do it comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
Sir William Osier
Once a gentleman always a gentleman.
Charles Dickens
Propriety of manners and consideration for others are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.
Benjamin Disraeli
Genius does what it must and talent does what it can.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Gift like genius I often think only means an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Ellice Hopkins
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
V.S. Pritchett
The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W.H. Auden
Improvement makes straight roads but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
William Blake
One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth.
Dorothy Frances Gurney
Business is more exciting than any game.
Lord Beaverbrook
Poetry is a mug's game.
T.S Eliot
I believe the future is only the past again entered through another gate.
Arthur Wing Pinero
Man is a gaming animal.
Charles Lamb
By gaming we lose both our time and treasure - two things most precious to the life of man.
Owen Felltham
We had a very successful trip to Russia we got back.
Bob Hope
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
Evelyn Waugh
Madam I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life let us swear eternal friendship.
Sydney Smith
Friendship peculiar boon of Heaven The noble mind's delight and pride To men and angels only given To all the lower world denied.
Samuel Johnson
Animals are such agreeable friends- they ask no questions they pass no criticisms.
George Eliot
Most of our misfortunes are comments of our friends upon them.
Charles Caleb Colton
Friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.
Augustine Birrell
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship is love without his wings!
Lord Byron
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.
Charlotte Brontë
The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
Cyril Connolly
That friendship may be at once fond and lasting there must not only be equal virtue on each part but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed but the same means must be approved by both.
Samuel Johnson
Men only become friends by community of pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
True friends ... face in the same direction toward common projects interests goals.
C.S. Lewis
To associate with other like-minded people in small purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction.
Aldous Huxley
Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship is a union of spirits a marriage of hearts and the bond there of virtue.
Samuel Johnson
Who friendship with a knave hath made is judged a partner in the trade.
John Gay
Treat your friends as you do your picture and place them in their best light.
Jennie Jerome Churchill
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any viable reason.
Lord Chesterfield
As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory.
Walter Savage Landor
Always set high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
Samuel Johnson
I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend perhaps the friend sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.
Arthur Christopher Benson
A new acquaintance is like a new book. I prefer it even if bad to a classic.
Benjamin Disraeli
Many a friendship-long loyal and self-sacrificing-rested at first upon no thicker a foundation than a kind word.
Frederick W. Faber
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life he will soon find himself left alone.
Samuel Johnson
We need new friends. Some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact an ideal version of their lives.
Logan Pearsall Smith
There is a magic in the memory of a schoolboy friendship. It softens the heart and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart.
Benjamin Disraeli
True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
Charles Caleb Colton
To those who know thee not no words can paint! And those who know thee know all words are faint!
Hannah Moore