Quotes by British Authors - Page 712

-'What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?'There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter
P.G. Wodehouse
If time be judiciously employed, there is time for everything.
George Head
And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.
Julian Barnes
The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.
Robert Greene
If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow. Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.
Bill Bryson
Time is Galleons, little brother.
J.K. Rowling
Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.
Graham Greene
But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until — later of sooner — perhaps — no, not perhaps — quite certainly: it will come.
Christopher Isherwood
We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass. And then I open the door and go to the dining-room, where he is sitting waiting for me at a table, and I think how in that moment I have aged, and passed on, how I have advanced one step towards an unknown destiny.We smile, we choose our lunch, we speak of this and that, but - I say to myself-I am not she who left him five minutes ago. She has stayed behind. I am another woman, older, more mature…
Daphne du Maurier
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Stephen Hunt
Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.
Susanna Clarke
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.
Alan W. Watts
I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched. Here we sat together, Maxim and I, hand-in-hand, and the past and the future mattered not at all. This was secure, this funny little fragment of time he would never remember, never think about again…For them it was just after lunch, quarter-past-three on a haphazard afternoon, like any hour, like any day. They did not want to hold it close, imprisoned and secure, as I did. They were not afraid.
Daphne du Maurier
The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.
Neil Gaiman
It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
Jane Austen
Time will explain.
Jane Austen
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Alan W. Watts
You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
Charles Buxton
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
Alan W. Watts
It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.
George Harrison
A Star is always a star no matter what stage they are on or at
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Success is simply the wisdom born out of so called failures
Rasheed Ogunlaru
This caterpillar does not just simply grow wingsFirst, it must alter its mind; transform the very being of itselfIt must climb the tallest tree, the highest mountainSwim the deepest of oceansWalk through the fiercest of flamesAnd then, if it chooses, this caterpillar can become a butterfly
Aubrey Moore
Sharpen and trust your judgement: learn when spending is a shrewd investment and when it is merely an indulgence
Rasheed Ogunlaru
There are two powerful fuels, two forces; motivation and inspiration. To be motivated you need to know what your motives are. Over time - and to sustain you through it - your motivation must become an inner energy; a 'motor' driving you forward, passionately, purposefully, wisely and compassionately... come what may, every day. Inspiration is an outer - worldly - energy that you breathe and draw in. It may come from many places, faces, spaces and stages - right across the ages. It is where nature, spirit, science, mind and time meet, dance, play and speak. It keeps you outward facing and life embracing. But you must be open-minded and open-hearted to first let it in and then let it out again. Together - blended, combined and re-entwined - motivation and inspiration bring connectivity, productivity, creativity and boundless possibilities that is not just 'self' serving but enriching to all humanity and societies...just as it should be.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
During my life journey I've discovered an interesting thing once you stop seeking outside you discover what already resides within.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Not everyone has to be the chosen one. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great from them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people probably. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyways.
Patrick Ness
A rich life is lived from a giving heart not a selfish mind.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
the only true path to your dream is to perceive what others dim illogical
Suli Breaks
Gabriel Oak: "It's time for you to fight your own battles... and win them too.
Thomas Hardy
There’s little growth and progression without learning and reflection
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Life is simply too short to live it less perfectly than it could be lived.
J.P. Delaney
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be
Jane Austen
The happiest people on Earth are the ones who know love.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
It could be said of him that while others chased the mirage of happiness, he was happy with being content.
Neel Mukherjee
Mistakes happen and life is full of twists and turns, but you mustn’t let any set backs hold you back from moving forward. Life is too short to dwell on things that have gone wrong.
Emily Williams
No one can give you that which you can find within yourself.
Belsebuub
There is no such thing as a miracle. That is, there is never an absolute reversal of any natural law. Every event, however unexpected by us, who are all more or less grossly ignorant of Nature and of Nature's laws, is the result of pre-existing causes, which develop results in ways and to extents strictly conformable to the energies set in motion. Supernormal events maybe, but nothing is supernatural.
William Wynn Westcott
Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow
Jean Rhys
It is a rule of life that we eventually become victims of the evil we do to others.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
If we don't think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?
Jennifer Ryan
I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.
Jennifer Ryan
Every time you see someone's bright-and-shiny, remember: They have their own crappy truths too. Of course they do. And every time you see your own crappy truth and feel despair and think, 'Is this my life?', remember: It's not. Everyone's got a bright-and-shiny, even if it's hard to find sometimes.
Sophie Kinsella
Mma Ramotswe tucked the cheque safely away in her bodice. Modern business methods were all very well, she thought, but when it came to the safeguarding of money there were some places which had yet to be bettered.
Alexander McCall Smith
Every winner is inclined to think he will be triumphant forever. Every loser tends to fear that he is going to be beaten forever. But both are wrong for the same reason: Everything changes except the face of god.
Elif Shafak
Don't waste your whole lifetime waiting for the perfect life when there's a perfectly good one within and right in front of you.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Life isn't filled with perfect harmony. The world is littered with bum notes, off-key moments and tuneless episodes. The trick is to find your own music, to ignore the discord and sing your own tune.
Annie Lyons
… real life hardly ever unfolds the way we’d like it to, not like in a story.
Lily Graham
It may take many voices for people to hear the same message.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Tai tapped his left nostril. 'You know what this is, Nakkoo? It's the place where the outside world meets the world inside you.
Salman Rushdie
...and spend my days surrounded by wise books, - bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.
H.G.Wells
We will all be destroyed whether we like it or not. I say let's like it.
DBC Pierre
My vibration is always in the sublime sunshine of life!
Debbie A. Anderson
Life is a wonderfully fine thing. Go live it.
Fennel Hudson
Your life is what happens when you're busy trying to become unbusy.
Max McKeown
You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible
Jojo Moyes
But she’s going to have a lot of problems."THAT’S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I’M TOLD. I WOULDN’T KNOW, OF COURSE."What about reincarnation?"Death hesitated.YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME."I’ve heard that some people do it all the time."YOU’VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU’VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK UP. YOU’VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT."It’s bad?"YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT.
Terry Pratchett
Embrace the perpetual joy of moving perpetually forward.
Max McKeown
To be fair, her expected hatred of all things male has not materialised because it is clear that she simply dislikes everyone. I suspect that this is an attempt to remain aloof from the minions but it has backfired badly. The women, who were looking upon her as a potential saviour, now regard her as a traitor to her sex. The blokes are just relieved.
Dougie Brimson
NEWT: Now there's absolutely nothing for you to worry about.JACOB: Tell me - has anyone ever believed you when you told them not to worry?NEWT: My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.
J.K. Rowling