Quotes by British Authors - Page 659

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; If I have freedom in my love And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.
Richard Lovelace
To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression
Rowan Atkinson
In riding a horse, we borrow freedom
Helen Thompson
Life calls the tune, we dance.
John Galsworthy
The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims.United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list -- yes, even the short skirts and the dancing -- are worth dying for?The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.
Salman Rushdie
Liberties aren't given, they are taken.
Aldous Huxley
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
Mary Wollstonecraft
You can do anything you want. You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never given a chance to know. ....Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words.... You are anything...everyone, anyone. ...You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep aroung you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear. ...Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.
Melvin Burgess
How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.
Salman Rushdie
There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will
Elizabeth Wein
Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining.
Alan Moore
If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?
Mary Astell
Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.
Salman Rushdie
I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.
Charlotte Brontë
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell
It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand Russell
To die hating them, that was freedom.
George Orwell
Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.
Alan Moore
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Neil Gaiman
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Charlie Chaplin
My mother said I broke her heart...but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us...but within that inch we are free.
Alan Moore
I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.
Charlotte Brontë
Dreams go by opposites I was once told.
Anthony Burgess
All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop.She's realized the real problem with stories - if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
Neil Gaiman
I am me and I have been Juliette and both of us have dreamed this dream repeatedly. And what makes this dream so unfortunate is that it is a true thing that happened to someone else ... who is both of us.
Charles Stross
When an author sleeps, her brain creates more stories for her pen.
Evelyn Smith
Sometimes it's important to dare to dream - small or big - like Mandela, Gandhi, Winfrey, Obama, Malala and Dr King. From Einstein to Hawking - the skies no limit. From Ali to the Williams sisters - through trials and talent find the champions within. Like my mother did to raise great kids. Like the one or many who run with this. Like the unsung heroes in every city and village. Like the kind of heart and selfless healers. Like every act of kindness you ever did and received. Like the human spirit beyond class, colour and creed. Like every soul who has raised our consciousness. From one to all - love IS all we have and need.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Spreading its wings, her love stretched out and touching his tangled, frozen soul and from the first word, became ensnared in its icy grip where it remained, intrinsically entwined within an alternating web of dreams and nightmares. Forever lost, forever lost...
Virginia Alison
Because it is the nature of Dreams, and ONLY of Dreams, to define Reality. Destiny is bound to existence. Death is limited by what she will or will not accept.
Neil Gaiman
To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.
Jane Austen
O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, Would all their colours from the sunset take.
John Keats
If that's what you want to do, then you should go do it-and do it well.
John Wood
No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die,they hide in pairsand read about themselves—in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Craig Raine
No, there was nothing unusual in any of these dreams as dreams. They were merely displaced in Time.
J.W. Dunne
Maybe we will meet again in the paths of dreaming, but my heart tells me this is farewell.
Erin Hunter
But what is this clock, marking only so many years, that such men seem to consult in the dark of their being? We do not know. All we do know for certain is that no such clock, no such warnings, can come out of the passing time that we are told is all we have. They belong to a larger idea of Time, like all these dreams that came true.
J.B. Priestley
What appears to be definite and precise does not belong to any acceptable reality. It is only the experiences, the queer previsions, the fleeting premonitions, that are real. Vague and insubstantial though they may appear to be, compared with anything else in the mists and shifting lights of Time theory, they loom up like mountains of iron ore.
J.B. Priestley
The greatest things to have can't be possessed, they exist within yet can be shared, like freedom, love, trust, integrity, fun, dreams, creativity, wisdom, peace.
Jay Woodman
Life is an accumulation of what your Heart and mind has pondered most, a conclusion of all you wishes, dreams and desires.
Steven Redhead
Pursue your dreams unceasingly until you achieve exactly what it is that you imagined.
Steven Redhead
Start creating a life you desire, bringing your dreams to life, taking what is then turning it around to create what is possible.
Steven Redhead
The pursuit of common dreams only produces common results.
Steven Redhead
When you follow your heart you allow miraculous possibilities to unfold.
Menna van Praag
They were doers and thinkers and lovers and seekers and givers, but dreamers, most dangerously of all.
Taiye Selasi
Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth. Roll up that tender air and the plant dies, the colour fades. The earth we walk on is a parched cinder. It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles scorch our feet. By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ‘Tis waking that kills us.
Virginia Woolf
She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone else. Sometimes she feels frightened." He pauses, and adds in a softer voice, "Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her."s
Sophie Kinsella
The way to make your dreams come true is to start believing in them.
Helen Barry
The way to make your dreams come true is to absolutely believe in them.
Helen M. Barry
One of the most human things that you can do is reach out for the stars knowing that you might not ever touch them; we are all perfectly imperfect, but to live knowing so is to be a fulfilled human being.
Oli Anderson
Truth and dreams are always getting muddled.
David Almond
Life is like the sea. Its tides and currents sometimes take a man to distant shores that he never dreamed existed
Jocelyn Murray
A dream is not needing anything. If it is a good one, it is waiting peaceably for ever until it is released and allowed to do its job. If it is a bad one, it is always fighting to get out.
Roald Dahl
We knew that it would soon be over, and so we put it all into a poem, to tell the universe who we were, and why we were here, and what we said and did and thought and dreamed and yearned for. We wrapped our dreams into words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable.
Neil Gaiman
I woke in the hour before dawn, stuck in that strange state where the memory of your dreams is still powerful enough to motivate your actions.
Ben Aaronovitch
A few simple tips for life: feet on the ground, head to the skies, heart open...quiet mind
Rasheed Ogunlaru
My dreams are crowded with people, as though to compensate for the solitariness of my waking hours.
Anna Lyndsey
. . . and he knew that our dreams are none the less terrible to lose, because they have never been the realities for which we have mistaken them.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The conversation was like the sort one has in dreams—mad but interesting.
Robert Graves
He had been quite unprepared for this particular blow, striking under every conceivable kind of armour, and for some minutes he could hardly bear the pain, but sat there blinking in the sun. 'Christ,' he said at last. 'Another day.
Patrick O'Brian