Quotes by British Authors - Page 646

I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.
Friedrich A. Hayek
The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies — socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor — and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.
John Pilger
A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.
Alastair Reynolds
By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.
John le Carré
It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling...
V.S. Naipaul
The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.
G.K. Chesterton
A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.
Terry Eagleton
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Winston S. Churchill
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
Taylor Caldwell
Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?
Arun D. Ellis
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
Julian Barnes
What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.
Terry Jones
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
Winston S. Churchill
Consensus: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?
Margaret Thatcher
Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.
Alan Moore
It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking
Stephen Fry
And at that moment the alligators burst into the room.
Genevieve Cogman
His rapier was at his belt, glittering as he swung. He reached down, ripped the sword clear. I jumped over a slashing frond of plasm, spun round with the water bottle in my hand. I hurled it across to Lockwood. George threw his rapier to me.Watch this now. Sword and bottle, sailing through the air, twin trajectories, arching beautifully through the mass of swirling tendrils towards Lockwood and me. Lockwood held out his hand. I held out mine.Remember I said there was that moment of sweet precision when we gelled perfectly as a team?Yeah, well. This wasn't it.The rapier shot past, missing me by miles. It skidded halfway across the floor. The bottle struck Lockwood plumb in the centre of his forehead, knocking him through the window.There was a moment's pause.'Is he dead?' the skulls voice said 'Yay! Oh. No, he's hanging onto the shutters. Shame. Still, this is defiantly the funniest thing I've ever seen. You three really are incompetence on a stick
Jonathan Stroud
To whomever swapped my tattoo cream for toothpaste........ well played.
R.D. Ronald
Today I plan to smile a lot, only so people who know me will be freaked the fuck out.
R.D. Ronald
So a good man can be a bad Christian?""I suppose so.""Then a bad man," I said, "can be a good Christian?
Bernard Cornwell
Is somethin' wrong?" said Daft Wullie."Aye!" snapped the kelda. "Rob willnae tak' a drink o' Special Sheep Liniment!"Wullie's little face screwed up in instant grief."Ach, the Big Man's deid!" he sobbed. "Oh waily waily waily - "Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!" shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. "I am no' deid! I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man cannae feel the chilly winds o' Fate lashing aroound his nethers wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?
Terry Pratchett
It was a red-flannel chest-protector, one of those large quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines take the place of beneficial relics and images among the Protestant peoples of Christendom.
H.G.Wells
The art of writing involves making as many cups of tea as you can in the time available for writing. Then adding extra time for writing...
Alan Dapre
The torturer was wheeling around the room, shrieking, holding his impaled hand, which had a pen sticking out of it. The guard by the door was in paroxysms of laughter. Frey had crumpled the confession into a ball and was trying to get it into his mouth to eat it, but couldn't quote reach.
Chris Wooding
But it is infamous that they have not told you!’ declared Eustacie. ‘Je n’en reviendrai jamais!’‘If it’s all the same to you, miss, I’d just as soon you’d talk in a Christian language,’ said Mr. Stubbs.
Georgette Heyer
Your wolf is eating that man. I thought you should know.
Joanne Harris
An Act of Dissent is simply a way of saying, 'No, I do not accept this and, as my silence may be construed as acquiescence, I would like to make a small gesture to indicate that you can all go fuck yourselves.
Mark Thomas
No sir," said Mr Molloy. "I'm mighty sorry I can't meet you in any way, but the fact is I'm all fixed up in Oil. Oil's my dish. I began in Oil and I'll end up in Oil. I wouldn't be happy outside of Oil.""Oh?" said Mr Carmody, regarding this Human Sardine with as little open hostility as he could manage on the spur of the moment.
P.G. Wodehouse
Well, Watson, what do you make of it?'Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.'How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.''I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me', said he.
Arthur Conan Doyle
For a tiny instant Faith wondered whether it would benefit the doctor's investigation if he experienced a cliff fall first-hand.
Frances Hardinge
The Sufi saying has it: "God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!
Idries Shah
The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.
Idries Shah
I am aware I sound like a Marxist Victor Meldrew but, guess what, I'm over 50 and I don't give a fuck.
Mark Thomas
The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one.”"Don't vote. It just encourages them....
Billy Connolly
Everyone’s face is odd, because we only get one.
Benny Bellamacina
On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.
George Eliot
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.
Charlie Brooker
It is much harder than you might think to show people your bottom.
Mark Forsyth
Life is a windowless room in the Hotel Bellevue.
Victoria Wood
Turning things over and over in isolation had led me to a certain point, but I knew that to get any further I'd have to voice some ideas aloud, just to see how they sounded. But I certainly didn't go to Ellie expecting any kind of constructive input on her part. It was more that I'd hit a wall and needed someone to talk around the subject with - like when you come up against a problem that's just immune to normal logic.
Gavin Extence
My cock has been hiding since the day she arrived," Bjarni had said, but only when he was sure she was out of earshot, which was a full day after she left. "You worry for nothing brother," Bjorn had said, "for even a seiðr-wife (witch) cannot put a spell on something she can't see. It would be like trying to hit a louse with a spear-throw.
Giles Kristian
And she gave him a melting smile, the glutinous sweetness of which he devoured with the avidity of a diabetic who swallows a fatal spoonful of jam.
John Collier
Ah, if only we were born roaring with laughter and took that emotional template through life with us! Whoever's in charge seriously messed up somewhere. I can only hope that right now, that selfsame Whoever is wryly relating their cock-up to some celestial colleague, who responds: 'Hey, you should put that in a book. LOL!
Steve Cole
Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.
Neel Burton
I saved a man's life once,' said Granny. 'Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I'd bought it from the dwarves. That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.'She patted Esk's hand as nicely as possible. 'You're a bit young for this,' she said, 'but as you grow older you'll find most people don't set foot outside their own heads much.
Terry Pratchett
What a shabby lot of highbrows have turned out tonight," he said, when he saw us. "It makes me ashamed to be one.
Anthony Powell
If it’s taking to long to get up the career ladder, get a career lift.
Benny Bellamacina
Bad habits have brought me this far: why change such a tried-and-true formula?
Christopher Hitchens
No one has the ability to laugh at their misfortunes like the women of the East End.
Philip Ridley
4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours.
Muriel Spark
Love is like chickenpox. It's much worse when it comes late.
Neel Burton
Child, if such folks awe you, then picture them on the lavatory, straining, constipated. They will at once seem small, pathetic, manageable." And she whispered to me a great, universal truth: "THE BOWELS ARE GREAT LEVELLERS.
Angela Carter
You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs
Chris Cleave
Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity, Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policemen like you.
Dorothy L. Sayers
I have a bad habit of wolfing down things that catch my eye.
Katze Snow
There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room.
Patrick O'Brian
Drelmere and sons, fine outfitters for the discerning magician!” he was shouting, his voice barely carrying over the hubbub. “Robes! Pointy hats! Beard grooming supplies! Yes, you sir, how can OH GOD HURRAAARRGLAB.”I waited patiently for him to finish decorating the pavement with his stomach contents. “Sorry,” he said, bent double and gulping. Impressively, he immediately continued his sales pitch from that position. “Looking for a new robe?”“Yes, this one’s starting to whiff a bit.”“Yes, I . . . gathered that, sir.” He took a few deep, groaning breaths into a star-patterned hanky and seemed to gather himself.“What sort of price range were you OH GOD YOUR EYES HURRAAARRGLAB.”I tapped my now bile-sodden foot. “Shall I come back later?
Yahtzee Croshaw
State your HURRAAARRGLAB,” went the monarch.“Mr. Wonderful,” said the advisor, daintily wiping the king’s mouth with a hanky. “What do we keep telling you about your interrogation methods? The information’s never reliable and it really hurts our image.”“It’s all right,” I sighed. “This is my actual face.
Yahtzee Croshaw
No. I just like dabbing girls' faces with napkins. It's a fetish of mine. Don't worry - my shrink says it's harmless.
Zoe Sugg