Quotes by British Authors - Page 674

What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.
Doris Lessing
The Amoeba?" she asked Aiden."The gang," he said, tossing his hand to indicate all around. "Mypeople. A large amorphous mass that keeps on changing size, hasn'tmuch apparent use, sometimes makes you sick, and occasionally breaksoff into smaller parts that act exactly like the parent.
Annette Curtis Klause
Where's the point in fighting and slaying if you can make a friend out of anybeast instead of a foe?
Brian Jacques
After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name...
Diana Wynne Jones
That men of this kind despise women, though a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears to be justified. Indeed, though naturally not inclined to 'fall in love' in this direction, such men are by their nature drawn rather near to women, and it would seem that they often feel a singular appreciation and understanding of the emotional needs and destinies of the other sex, leading in many cases to a genuine though what is called 'Platonic' friendship. There is little doubt that they are often instinctively sought after by women, who, without suspecting the real cause, are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic which they miss in the normal man.
Edward Carpenter
For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.
Henry Fielding
That's the way girls are isn't it? They swear eternal friendship, and then as soon as a man's in the case it's all forgotten.
Jude Morgan
Liking is more important than loving. It lasts. I want what is between us to last, Luke. I don't want us just to love each other and marry and get tired of each other and then want to marry some one else.""Oh! my dear Love, I know. You want reality. So do I. What's between us will last for ever because it's founded on reality.
Agatha Christie
I was a man before I was a king, and no true man walks away when a friend needs him.
David Gemmell
Having friends was really important, wasn't it? Even if sometimes they did stuff which upset you?
Helen Salter
Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to avow them and half doubtful if they can after all be right. Put me back among my Friends and in half an hour - in ten minutes - these same views and standards become once more indisputable. The opinion of this little circle, while I am in it, outweighs that of a thousand outsiders: as Friendship strengthens, it will do this even when my Friends are far away. For we all wish to be judged by our peers, by the men "after our own heart." Only they really know our mind and only they judge it by standards we fully acknowledge. Theirs is the praise we really covet and the blame we really dread.
C.S. Lewis
Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong." I told him that he knows next to nothing about me & I know nothing about him. He jabbed at his eyes & jabbed at mine, as if that single gesture were ample explanation.
David Mitchell
Sometimes friends do go from us-it will happen more and more as you grow up, Chugg. But if you really love your friends, they're never really gone. Somewhere they're watching over you and they're always there inside your heart.-Martin
Brian Jacques
For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did.
Hilaire Belloc
There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect
Charles Dickens
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
Sydney Smith
I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits.
Virginia Woolf
If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?
David Nicholls
Only by binding together as a single force will we remain strong and unconquerable.
Chris Bradford
I thought how you can never tell just by looking at them what they were thinking or what was happening In their lives. Even when you got daft people or drunk people on buses, people that went on stupid and shouted rubbish or tried to tell you all about themselves, you could never really tell about them either... I knew if somebody looked at me, they'd know nothing about me, either.
David Almond
If you can eat with mates or friends or family, I mean, it's such a brilliant thing isn't it? If you feel really rubbish and you have a nice bit of food it makes you feel good, you know?
Jamie Oliver
The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!
C.S. Lewis
The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action I can recall in our association. I was alone.
Arthur Conan Doyle
But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.
Elizabeth Wein
Great pals we've always been. In fact there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey.
P.G. Wodehouse
As you go through life's rich tapestry, you realize that most people you meet aren't fit to shine your shoes. It's a sad fact, but it's true. A good friend is someone who'd hide you if you were on the run for murder. How many of them do you know?
Lemmy Kilmister
Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know,I do not fear the night aboveAs I fear the friends below.
Stevie Smith
But then I wondered if sometimes our friendships are a bit like clothes and when they start feeling uncomfortable it's not because we've done anything wrong. It just means that we've outgrown them.
Zoe Sugg
Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?
Emily Brontë
What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?
Christopher Isherwood
True friendhip is like sound health: the value of it is seldom know until it is lost.
Charles Caleb Colton
A friend is someone who walks into a room when everyone else is walking out.
Gary Moore
If there’s one thing I learned, it is that blood families can sometimes be the pits; it’s the one you make for yourself that really gives you a home and people to love.
Joss Stirling
Like so many plain cups on the shelves. You can reach for them, use them without thinking. Most of them don't matter. Sometimes you lose your grip on one of them and it falls and smashes to piece, and you shrug and say to yourself, what a pity. Then you reach for the cup that you use every day, one that you love and use so often that as you stretch out your hand it is already making the shape that fits its curve. You are certain that yesterday it was in its proper place, but now there is nothing. Just air. You have lost something that was so familiar, so much a part of your life that you were not even looking for it. Just expecting it to be there, as always.
Rosie Thomas
And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me.
Patrick Ness
Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, "Yes. But I bet no dog would ever confess it to the other dogs.
C.S. Lewis
Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. Is must not become what the people call a "mutual admiration society"; yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.
C.S. Lewis
Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go.
T.H. White
I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.
Graham Greene
Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness in another.
Eustace Budgell
With the world's fate resting on your shoulder - you're gonna need someone on your side.You can't do it by yourself any longer - you're gonna need someone on your side.
Morrissey
People who bore one another should meet seldom; people who interest one another, often.
C.S. Lewis
Please don’t think so lightly of liking someone. It’s terribly important. It is a kind of loving, you know, and one that frequently lasts a lot longer than romance. You can fall out of love, as well in. Most of us do, especially if you don’t actually like the person as well. It doesn’t always grow into love by any means, but sometimes it does.
Anne Perry
Once a friend, always a friend. Why should borders stop that?
Erin Hunter
Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,There's always Pooh and Me.Whatever I do, he wants to do,"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.Let's go together," says Pooh, says he."Let's go together," says Pooh.
A.A. Milne
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
Aldous Huxley
Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way.
Charles Kingsley
But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that’s almost as good as being there yourself. You’re in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the further away your friends, and the more spread out they are the better your chances of going safely through the world…
Helen Oyeyemi
I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.
John Christopher
I sew his ears on from time to time, sure.
Patrick O'Brian
A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.
David Nicholls
Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.
Graham Greene
The friends who met here and embraced are gone,Each to his own mistake;
W.H. Auden
Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
P.G. Wodehouse
Wherever it is you may be, it is your friends who make your world.
Chris Bradford
Friendship is the wine of life.
Edward Young
Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world, with his chin in his hand, called out "Pooh!" "Yes?" said Pooh. "When I'm--when--Pooh!" "Yes, Christopher Robin?" "I'm not going to do Nothing any more." "Never again?" "Well, not so much. They don't let you." Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again. "Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully. "Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?" "Just me?" "Yes, Pooh." "Will you be here too?" "Yes Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be Pooh." "That's good," said Pooh. "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." Pooh thought for a little. "How old shall I be then?" "Ninety-nine." Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said. Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm not quite--" he stopped and tried again-- "Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?" "Understand what?" "Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!" "Where?" said Pooh. "Anywhere." said Christopher Robin.So, they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.
A.A. Milne
I may be stupid, as you say, to believe in honour and friendship and loyalty without price. But these are virtues to be cherished, for without them we are no more than beasts roaming the land.
David Gemmell
Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
Jane Austen