Quotes by British Authors - Page 651

One soldier picked up a dead Argentine, supported the corpse's weight underneath his arm, put a cigarette in the dead man's mouth, then one in his own. He then held a lighter under the corpse's cigarette and his friend took a photograph. They both laughed. I also laughed.This was foolish ― smoking can kill.
Ken Lukowiak
I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it must be rudimentary. I asked him what he meant."Sir," he answered, "this organ is identical with the rim at the bottom of a cup; it is but another form of the same function. Its purposes must have been to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table upon which it rested. You would find, if you were to look up the history of tobacco-pipes, that in early specimens this protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It will have been broad at the bottom, and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it. Use and disuse must have come into play and reduced the function its present rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir," he continued, "if, in the course of time, it were to become modified still farther, and to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll, or even a butterfly, while in some cases, it will become extinct.
Samuel Butler
We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy “one word” Zen. When asked “What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?” he replied: “An appropriate statement.” On another occasion, he answered: “Cake.” I admired his directness.
Stephen Batchelor
For my part, I am determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day.
Jane Austen
The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock’s Gardens, Liggs’s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak.
Charles Dickens
Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.
Terry Pratchett
Impartially, shrewdly, I considered suicide, though not in my worst moments. The bottle of pills. The note: 'No hard feelings, everyone, but I've thought about it and it's just not on, is it? It's nearly on, but not quite. No? Anyway, all the best, C.
Martin Amis
Just then there came the wheezy sound of an accordion. It was an odd little tune that, had he been alive exactly one hundred and fifty years later, the scarf-wearing pirate would have recognized as the first few bars from ‘Theme to Murder, She Wrote’.
Gideon Defoe
All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he thought, there's not much difference between politics and sex; it's all aboutpower. He didn't suppose he was the first person in the world to make this observation. It's a question of seduction, and how fast and cheap you can effect it: if Camille, he thought, approximates to one of those little milliners who can't make ends meet - in other words, an absolute pushover - then Robespierre is a Carmelite, mind set on becoming Mother Superior. You can't corrupt her; you can wave your cock under her nose, and she's neither shocked nor interested: why should she be, when she hasn't the remotest ideawhat it's for?
Hilary Mantel
Armour... is part of a state of mind... in which you admit the possibility... of being hit.
Joe Abercrombie
I have lived now for over a century, yet I can still say with complete confidence that no one can claim to have plumbed the depths of human misery who has not shared the fore-ends of a submarine with a camel.
John Biggins
In his autobiography Stravinsky relates that the first music he remembers was made by a peasant, working his hand in his armpit to produce a rhytmic farting.
Craig Raine
This revolution - will it be a living?''We must hope so. Look, I have to go, I'm visiting a client. He's going to be hanged tomorrow.''Is that usual?''Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases.
Hilary Mantel
As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire.
Hilary Mantel
He feared, in his secret heart, that one day in company the baby would sit up and speak; that it would engage his eyes, appraise him, and say, 'You prick.
Hilary Mantel
A sturdy hold, but I think there's something up with the material.
Pete Sortwell
Being single isn't a terminal disease.""Try telling that to my mother.
Alexandra Potter
What in cat hell just happened?
Sarah Jane Avory
It’s a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. . . . It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying “Wow,” a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening.
Terry Pratchett
Lady Constance's lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother's head.
P.G. Wodehouse
A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.
Douglas Adams
...Recognising, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--""Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" Asked Holmes, with some asperity."To the man of precised, scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.""Then had you not better consult him?""I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--""Just a little," said Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle
I think that people's sexual preferences are a legitimate subject for humour, dirty humour if at all possible.
Christopher Hitchens
Bustle about Noddy, or we shant be in time to snabble any of the lobster patties.
Georgette Heyer
Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.”Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh’ ...”Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.” Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Even you.” Fabre’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.” He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fabre said. “Even if it kills one of us.” Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.
Hilary Mantel
Just looking at him made Andrew feel tense and irritated. It was wonder perfect strangers didn't go up to the guy and punch him in the face.
Jane Davitt
Stop looking at the walls, look out the window.
Karl Pilkington
It's only human nature for dogs to chase motrobikes
Peter Tinniswood
It's only human nature for dogs to chase motorbikes
Peter Tinniswood
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.
Charlie Brooker
Public schoolboys are not merely conservatives, they are by nature totalitarian reactionaries.
David Benedictus
I was much affected by the internal troubles of the Punch family; I thought that with a little more tact on the part of Mrs. Punch and some restraint held over a temper, naturally violent, by Mr. Punch, a great deal of this sad misunderstanding might have been prevented.
Edmund Gosse
In 1969 I published a small book on Humility. It was a pioneering work which has not, to my knowledge, been superceded.
Frank Pakenham
Monseigneur, I have killed you! You are dead! You are dead!"You display an unseemly joy," he remarked. "I had no notion you were so bloodthirsty.
Georgette Heyer
Wainscott, Deepspace Operations Group,’ said the man. ‘Wasn’t here, don’t exist, pleased to meet you.
Toby Frost
Q. Why don't the British panic?A. They do, but very quietly. It is impossible for the naked eye to tell their panic from their ecstasy.
George Mikes
Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands
Bob Hope
I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.
Edwin A. Abbott
The only good thing about that decision, Gatt, is that I'll get tea before you.
Graham Gooch
When you're conscious of what you're permitting to germinate inside you, the weeds in your life will wither away of their own accord.
Lawrence Shorter
Pete couldn't believe how sanctimonious somebody could be just because they'd once had a soldering iron stuck up their arse.
Alexei Sayle
When the waiter brought the cheese-board, there was a large carrot carved in the shape of a mermaid sitting between the Dolcelatte and the Pecorino. Teo could have sworn that the carrot-mermaid flexed her tail and plunged her little hand inside a smelly Gorgonzola. 'Tyromancy, ye know,' remarked the mermaid. 'The Ancient Art of Divination by Cheese.' Then she pulled her tiny hand out and inspected the green cheese-mold on her tiny fingers. 'Lackaday!' she moaned. 'Stinking! It goes poorly for Venice and Teodora, it do!
Michelle Lovric
She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her -- she was only an Object of Contempt
Jane Austen
... and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.
Jane Austen
Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
Terry Pratchett
it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
G.K. Chesterton
When he pursed his lips and dropped a hand into his coat pocket, the last thing Nur expected him to pull out was a cricket ball. "I'd hoped for a disruptor at least," she muttered reprovingly. The Doctor slipped three fingers around the ball and hefted it experimentally. "I thought we'd try something a little less excessive." He breathed gently on to the maroon leather and polished it on his leg as the Sontaran finally tossed the Kshatriya aside and stopped to pick up its fallen weapon. He stepped around the corner, sighting along his free arm as the Sontaran straightened, its back fully turned. The cricket ball flashed down the length of the corridor in the blink of an eye, punching into the back of the Sontaran's collar and ricocheting away. To Nur's astonishment, the alien spasmed and crashed to the floor like a falling tree. "Out for a duck," the Doctor commented, blowing across his fingertips. "I've never seen anything killed by a cricket ball before." "You haven't yet. He'll wake up in a few minutes.
David A. McIntee
After that, we had a short conversation about how your body can sometimes seem totally separate. She said her body can feel like a distant bureaucracy controlled by telegrams from her brain, and I said my body is sometimes like that of Mario Mario, being controlled with a Nintendo joypad. Mario's surname is Mario.
Joe Dunthorne
I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests.
Joe Dunthorne
Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.
Joe Dunthorne
The Brigadier had no wish to shake hands with the improbable young man in the ridiculous frock-coat.
Peter Grimwade
Ask any Ferrari, Porsche or Ray-Ban salesperson about their average customer and you will very likely hear that he is not, as the adverts would have us believe, a virile young footballer with shiny hair, a rippling six pack and a trouser pouch like a new punch bag. He is, in fact, a middle-aged bloke wearing more chins than he started life with and carrying the clear evidence of forty years of beer and pies slung across his midriff.
Richard Hammond
I’d spend hours in HMVs, Virgin Megastores and second-hand record shops staffed by greasy-haired 40-year-olds dressed as 20-year-olds, listening to contemporary music of every genre – Britrock, heavy maiden, gang rap, brakebeat. And I came to a startling but unshakeable conclusion: no genuinely good music has been created since 1988.
Alan Partridge
So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.
Alexander McCall Smith
If the colour of life turns grey turn the palette the other way
Benny Bellamacina
It is a curiously moving experience, to hear 350 sailors uttering the words "Oh shit!" in eleven different languages.
John Biggins
No, but if I were an illegal, experimental replicant hiding the truth of an international conspiracy I would try and put myself out of the way of those investigating it, wouldn't you? I don't think hiding under a bed will be very successful. But, if you've any better idea of what the deadly robot assassin is up to, please feel free to act upon it.
Guy Haley
The nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her
Emily Brontë
He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him.
Terry Pratchett
Always remember rule #6... don't take yourself so damn seriously
Ben and Rosamund Zander