Quotes by British Authors - Page 678

This essay is intended to serve as a reminder that immense and threatening divisions in mankind can spring from differences between virtues as well as from envies and greeds. When the virtues on each part are largely inapprehensible by the other, the danger is heightened by Man's natural fear of what he does not understand, and his inclination to suppose it not worth understanding. To attack it easier than to study. There are also, in this case of China and the West, intense and complex cultural vanities on both sides to be taken into account: vanities largely inexplicable the one to the other...
Ivor A. Richards
As I was saying, that’s the dark secret of our time, no one mentions it, but every time one opens a door one is greeted by a shrill, desperate and inaudible scream.
Doris Lessing
I don’t want to be told when I wake up, terrified by a dream of total annihilation, because of the H-bomb exploding, that people felt that way about the cross-bow. It isn’t true. There is something new in the world. And I don’t want to hear, when I’ve had an encounter with some mogul in the film industry, who wields the kind of power over men’s minds that no emperor ever did, and I come back feeling trampled on all over, that Lesbia felt like that after an encounter with her wine-merchant. And I don’t want to be told when I suddenly have a vision (though God knows it’s hard enough to come by) of a life that isn’t full of hatred and fear and envy and competition every minute of the night and the day that this is simply the old dream of the golden age brought up to date …
Doris Lessing
Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that "I" and all other "things" now present will vanish, until this knowledge compels you to release them - to know it now as surely as if you had just fallen off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Indeed you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it's no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all.
Alan W. Watts
How fast can you run?When you really have to?In heels and a work skirt, with your bag banging against your side: how fast?When you’re late for your train and you have to get home, and you race down the platform with seconds to spare: how fast can you run?What if it isn’t a train you’re running for, but your life?If you’re late home from work, and there’s no one in sight. If you haven’t charged your phone and no one knows where you are. If the footsteps behind you are getting closer, and you know, because you do it every day, that you’re on your own; that between the platform and the exit you won’t see another soul.If there’s breath on your neck, and the panic is rising, and it’s dark, and cold, and wet.If it’s just the two of you.Just you, and whoever’s behind you.Whoever is chasing you.How fast could you run then?It doesn’t matter how fast.Because there’s always someone who can run faster.
Clare Mackintosh
Fear is a serviceable tool, I suppose. Like the stalls in a battery farm. If you want to keep people from their collective strength, make them too afraid of each other to ever meet or talk.
Mike Carey
Just going outside put me at risk of winding up dead or captured. If I let that daunt me, I'd never do anything.
Samantha Shannon
Who is Mr. Jasper?"Rosa turned aside her head in answering: "Eddy's uncle, and my music-master.""You do not love him?""Ugh!" She put her hands up to her face, and shook with fear or horror."You know that he loves you?""O, don't, don't, don't!" cried Rosa, dropping on her knees, and clinging to her new resource. "Don't tell me of it! He terrifies me. He haunts my thoughts, like a dreadful ghost. I feel that I am never safe from him. I feel as if he could pass in through the wall when he is spoken of." She actually did look round, as if she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow behind her."Try to tell me more about it, darling.""Yes, I will, I will. Because you are so strong. But hold me the while, and stay with me afterwards.""My child! You speak as if he had threatened you in some dark way.""He has never spoken to me about - that. Never.""What has he done?""He has made a slave of me with his looks. He has forced me to understand him, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep silence, without his uttering a threat. When I play, he never moves his eyes from my hands. When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my lips. When he corrects me, and strikes a note, or a chord, or plays a passage, he himself is in the sounds, whispering that he pursues me as a lover, and commanding me to keep his secret. I avoid his eyes, but he forces me to see them without looking at them. Even when a glaze comes over them (which is sometimes the case), and he seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most, he obliges me to know it, and to know that he is sitting close at my side, more terrible to me than ever.""What is this imagined threatening, pretty one? What is threatened?""I don't know. I have never even dared to think or wonder what it is.""And was this all, to-night?""This was all; except that to-night when he watched my lips so closely as I was singing, besides feeling terrified I felt ashamed and passionately hurt. It was as if he kissed me, and I couldn't bear it, but cried out. You must never breathe this to any one. Eddy is devoted to him. But you said to-night that you would not be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives me - who am so much afraid of him - courage to tell only you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too frightened to be left by myself.
Charles Dickens
For it is a choice, I think, to close the heart, just as it is a choice to open it. It is a choice to look at what distresses you, and a choice to shut your eyes. It is a choice to hold tight your pain, or else let it slip your grasp, set it free to make its mark upon the world.
Beth Underdown
Philosophers have argued about the strongest emotion known to man. Some say ‘love’, others ‘hate’, others ‘fear’. I am disposed to put ‘curiosity’ on a level, at least, with these august sensations, just mere simple inquisitiveness.
E.F. Benson
I imagined, too. And so imagination became my nemesis; my mind created monsters out of nothing.
Samantha Shannon
Great fear can cast love out.
Olivia Manning
I want the world, I think. Even if it scares me.
Sara Barnard
Before you can act you must choose. Before you can choose you must know. Before you can know you must feel. And before you can feel you must be trained.
David Amerland
The biggest fear a corporate government has is that the masses will refuse to work.
Steven Magee
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.
George Orwell
I started crying when the group [therapy] was over because the last thing we did upset me - we all held a piece of the same cloth, leaned back and supported each other's weight. I couldn't do it. I bent my legs and elbows and stood very firm, yet . . .I needed to feel supported, as i do in life, but i can't let myself be, and i pretend not to need that support.
Carol Lee
But, when she was alone, someone rapped on the door and she found herself on her feet, knife in hand, before she had time to reason with her fear.
Ruth Downie
What lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today we should have been happy.
C.S. Lewis
These days, loneliness is the new cancer - a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don't want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.
Gail Honeyman
Do not let me hearOf the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
T.S Eliot
The backward look behind the assuranceOf recorded history, the backward half-lookOver the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
T.S Eliot
I can’t bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel,” she continued. “Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse—to be tortured forever—I thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn’t it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out forever and ever?
Philip Pullman
We all die. We don't have to live our lives fearing it.
Claire North
The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled towards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular phrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking at our door. It is agreeable to escape, as Henley said, into the Street of By-and-Bye, where stands the Hostelry of Never. It is pleasant to play with children, especially unborn children. The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
G.K. Chesterton
Listen to the sadness,the echoes in my mind,the place where I usually hide,but now I cannot find.Why had it happened?What had I done?Where was I going?Now I'm on the run.Hiding from the echoes,the pounding in my ears,the beatings getting louder,it isn't death, I fear!
Anthony T.Hincks
We can become so cruel and so selfish when we are afraid.
Anne Perry
You have dwelt overmuch upon pain. Pain is a swift distress; it ends and is forgotten. Without memory and fear pain is nothing, a contradiction to be heeded, a warning to be taken. Without pain what would life become? Pain is the master only of craven men. It is in man's power to rule it.
H.G.Wells
In a polished surface of metal I happen to notice my reflected face; it wears a pale, beaten lonely look, eyes looking out at nothing with an expression of fear, frightened and lonely in a nightmare world. Something, I don’t know what, makes me think of my childhood; I remember myself as a schoolchild sitting at a hard wooden desk, and then as a little girl with thick, fair, wind-tossed hair, feeding the swans in a park. And it seems both strange and sad to me that all those childish years were spent in preparation for this – that, forgotten by everybody, with a beaten face, I should serve machinery in a place far away from the sun.
Anna Kavan
If you're scared, do something.
Elizabeth Wein
Selfishness comes from too little self-love, not too much, as we compensate for our lack. There's no such thing as caring for the self too much, just as there's no such thing as too much genuine affection for others. Our world suffers from too little self-love and too much judgment, insecurity, fear, and mistrust. If we all cared about ourselves more, most of these ills would disappear.
Anita Moorjani
A stink. A stench. A foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving. A compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take our her brain and wash it.
Terry Pratchett
No one conquers fear easily, Robert. It takes a brave heart to win great battles.
Peter Bunzl
Fear ain't respect—how could I have ever thought it was?
Peter Liney
The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.
P.D. James
Something like panic struck at Hurlow. Moffat's calm confession of fear withdrew the prop upon which he had leaned. Down there, among the motionless shadows, lurked invisible things, things that were nameless, shapeless and malignant; things which could see without being seen. One of the long lost terrors of childhood returned to him, and like a child he put his hand into Moffat's.
A.M. Burrage
All in a moment Hurlow forgot the beauty of the sounds and smelt fear. He smelt it as an animal smells it, the breath cold in his nostrils. He had read about Pan, a dead god who might safely be patronized while poring over a book in a London lodging, but here and at this hour a god not to be scorned. ("Furze Hollow")
A.M. Burrage
She was someone who heard each grain in the hour-glass, she felt the passing seconds like sandpaper against her softest skin. Time actually seemed to hurt her, and people helped her get through it. [..] Sometimes it seemed to Nathan that her life was just that, a feat of held breath, just another ten seconds, just another five, and then death would flood her lungs like water, a string of glass bubbles to the surface and then nothing. She was scared in a way that he could understand. The kind of fear that sends you running across a six-lane highway or jumping into rapids. She was someone who ran towards her fear, screaming. Who tried to frighten it. Who, in another period of history, would have been worshipped as a saint or burned as a witch.
Rupert Thomson
The image of the "presence," whatever it was, waiting there for him to go--this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short--he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.
Henry James
He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough; but precisely because of the extremity of danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he percieved, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situatuions. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.
George Orwell
A Stalin functionary admitted, "Innocent people were arrested: naturally - otherwise no one would be frightened. If people, he said, were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason.
Paul Johnson
So do we discover, in the world, that our worst fears are unfulfilled; yet we must fear, in order that we may feel delight.
Peter Ackroyd
The world is surely wide enough to walk without fear.
Jeanette Winterson
One day the enemy will cross the Great Green. They will bring war and tragedy to these eastern lands. Such is the nature of vile men. Yet we cannot live in dread of them. We cannot hide behind these high walls, our hearts trembling. For that is not life. We must accept the needs and the duties of each day, and face them one at a time.
David Gemmell
She realized with deep respect that this woman had always done what she had to do and faced what she had to face. If many of her fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage.
Elizabeth Goudge
There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.
Tahir Shah
Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair.
Tahir Shah
The past haunts the present in more ways than we think. It certainly scares the living daylights out of ME"~ Old Wrinkly
Cressida Cowell
There's no shame in fear. But understand this - the coward is ruled by fear, while the hero rides it like a wild stallion.
David Gemmell
Most of us tend to belittle all suffering except our own," said Mary. "I think it's fear. We don't want to come too near in case we're sucked in and have to share it.
Elizabeth Goudge
I breathed and breathed and did feel some calmness enter in, though it was, as always, shot with a sense of loss. Loss and fear.
Sebastian Faulks
The rain of Madre de Dios is similar to that of the Amazon, but there is a petrifying aspect to it, as if it seeks to wound rather than to nurture.
Tahir Shah
There isn't so much to be afraid of, out there. I can remember thinking it was funny to find that out, on the last night of my life; I'd spent the rest of it being afraid of everything.
Nick Hornby
The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just believe enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it.
Catherine Crowe
Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories.That high cupboard in the corner, from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with menacing stars; the mouseholes, the rusty grate - trumpet of every wind that blows - these objects at once lustily shouted at him in their own original tongues.("Out Of The Deep")
Walter de la Mare
Bond sat for a moment frozen to his chair. Suddenly, there flashed unwanted into his mind that most sinister line in poetry: 'They reckon ill who leave me out. When me they fly, I am the wings.
Ian Fleming
Why be crying, fearful, lonely, when you have the whole universe? Be still, listen to your heart, breathe, and know you need nothing.
Jay Woodman
This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 'Yes', without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic conscience.
Joseph Conrad
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.
Joseph Conrad
Fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
George Eliot