Quotes by British Authors - Page 713

Every impression ever made on a person from newborn babyhood onwards will contribute to the shape and texture of the imagination.
Lesley Glaister
I understood then, with absolute certainty, that theability of the horse to sense emotion, energy and spirit isbeyond what most of the human world realises. This is whytheir impact on us can be so instant, so consistentlypositive, so transformational.
Pam Billinge
Life will teach or beat you all you need to know. My advice take the compassionate class and peaceful path
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Life is too short Be with someone who takes your breath away
Mimi Novic
Every day something inside us dies because we do not have the courage to follow our dreams
Mimi Novic
One can never have enough socks.
Albus Dumbledore
Life, to me, is like fishing: you won’t catch anything until you start, and every year you get older is another year the fish might slip through the net.
Alex Staniforth
Danny: I’m a bit jealous, Sheila.Sheila: Are you, my dear? What on earth for?Danny: Well, because you’ve really lived, Sheila.Sheila: Of course I have, Daniel. What else is life for?
Louise Wener
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.
Philip Pullman
When you battle with your conscience and lose, you win. -Henny Youngman, comedian and violinist (1906-1998)
Henny Youngman
If you have ever come up against Nothing you have no idea how it can scare you out of your wits. When I was a child I used to be afraid of Something in the dark. I know now that the most fearful thing about the dark is that we may find Nothing in it.
Howard Spring
That's the thing I'm learning about being thrown out on yer own. Nobody does nothing for you. If you don't change it, it don't get changed.
Patrick Ness
Life does not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
It is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.
Jane Austen
It is when we are confronted with...poignant reminders of mortality that we become most aware of the strangeness and wonder of our brief life on Earth.
Kathleen Basford
Those who are made can be unmade.
Hilary Mantel
I now see my life, not as a slow shaping of achievment to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery of a purpose which I did not know.
Joanna Field
If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a-coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the road side until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence
John B. Gough
Well, it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken.
Alan Sillitoe
All life's training is just exactly what is needed for the true Life-work, still out of view but far away from none of us. Don't grudge me the learning of a new lesson.
Amy Carmichael
In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.
Benjamin Zander
In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency..the product of that struggle is the quality of your life and the nature of your soul.
Emma Forrest
She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed and made everything bend to it.
Jane Austen
You ever have the feeling you were in the wrong place? That if you could just get over the next hill, cross the next river, look down into the next valley, it'd all...fit. Be right.""All my life, more of less"“All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain’t no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I’ve learned … just to stick in the place I’m at. Just to be the man I am.
Joe Abercrombie
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Nicholas Butler
Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it.
Alex Garland
You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?
Julian Barnes
Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.
D.H. Lawrence
I'd spent so long trying to fit in,trying to be someone i wasn't,that i had no idea who i was any more.
Dorothy Koomson
Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs." - Helen Burns
Charlotte Brontë
There is no wealth but life.
John Ruskin
And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak...
Jojo Moyes
Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.' 'Too stupid.' 'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?' 'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.' 'Exactly.' 'That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus.' It was worse than he thought. 'No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food.
Nick Hornby
Just live well. Just live
Jojo Moyes
Too many people miss out on real love because they're too busy waiting for the ONE to show up
Alexandra Potter
The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Do not dwell upon the sins and mistakes of yesterday so exclusively as to have no energy and mind left for living rightly today, and do not think that the sins of yesterday can prevent you from living purely today.
James Allen
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
Zadie Smith
When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all.
Mark Lawrence
Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.
Robert Greene
I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.
Joe Abercrombie
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody it saves so much trouble
Rudyard Kipling
We are all capable of so much more than we think, the only thing we need to do is change our beliefs
Steven Aitchison
Every generation that goes into your genes is a generation of fighters, of survivors. And all those millions of lives are in you, in your blood.
Nick Lake
Adventure should be 80 percent 'I think this is manageable,' but it's good to have that last 20 percent where you're right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone.
Bear Grylls
Don’t play for safety. It’s the most dangerous thing in the world.
Hugh Walpole
I suffer from the congenital weakness of believing I can do anything.
Louis Mountbatten
I didn't mean that I'm a nonpareil now. But I'm different, yes. I've found out that I can do quite difficult things if I keep trying very hard, and at least I've discovered that if I don't keep myself occupied I'm unhappy and unpleasant.
Madeleine Brent
There is one thing we know about meaning: that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are.
Sally Brampton
Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance. Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease: impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence: lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary: hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution: selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. On the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances: pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace: thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision crystallize into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success, plenty, and freedom: energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of pleasantness: gentle and forgiving thoughts crystallize into habits of gentleness, which solidify into protective and preservative circumstances: loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true riches.A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.
James Allen
Today I was a teacher, employed. True, I was also a teacher untried, but that could also be an advantage. I would learn, by God I’d learn. Nothing was going to stop me.
E.R. Braithwaite
You get told to look before you leap. But if you are too careful you may end up just looking.
Max McKeown
Pushing your limits is what allows you to grow stronger, so if you find yourself feeling passive, it can make sense to dial it up a little. Get moving. Accomplish something small. Do something you enjoy. Embrace what moves you. And start again.
Max McKeown
Only the right pain gets the right gain.
Max McKeown
The best things happen to those who don't wait.
Max McKeown
If life is fast, live faster.
Max McKeown
She sincerely wishes success, for her new life, and intends that no failure of effort, temper, or spirits on her part will jeopardise it.
Jude Morgan
Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another.
Elizabeth von Arnim
To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster.
Stirling Moss
Spirituality is for people. It’s not just for those who you might have read about in books, it’s for people.
Belsebuub