Quotes by British Authors - Page 74

Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing. When we have made it the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson
He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further and try to plant a virtue in its place.
Charles Caleb Colton
Things good in themselves ... perfectly valid in the integrity of their origins become fetters if they cannot alter.
Freya Stark
Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly completely successfully or just completely the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
Julie Burchill
Change is not made without inconvenience even from worse to better.
Richard Hooker
Change lays her hand not upon the truth.
Algernon Swinburne
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake
The consistent thinker ... is either a walking mummy or else if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality a fanatical monomaniac.
Aldous Huxley
Any change even a change for the better is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
Arnold Bennett
Consistency is contrary to nature contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.
Aldous Huxley
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
Havelock Ellis
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W Somerset Maugham
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill
New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed without any other reason but because they are not already common.
John Locke
It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.
Samuel Butler
None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing when we have made it the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson
Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results we value it in the act.
Alice Meynell
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything ... or nothing.
Lady Astor
I will not change just to court popularity.
Margaret Thatcher
We must beware of needless innovations especially when guided by logic.
Winston Churchill
Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters.
Samuel Butler
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
There was an old man who said "How Shall I flee from this horrible cow? I will sit on this stile and continue to smile Which may soften the heart of that cow."
Edward Lear
Ay call it holy ground The soil where first they trod They have left unstained what there they found - Freedom to worship God.
Felicia D. Hemans
Hereditary boundsmen! Know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
Lord Byron
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.
John Stuart Mill
We must be free or die who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.
William Wordsworth
All men would be cowards if they durst.
Earl of Rochester
When moral courage feels that it is in the right there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
Leigh Hunt
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
Winston Churchill
When it comes to the pinch human beings are heroic.
George Orwell
All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law as of all benign laws is fear.
Elizabeth Goudge
A change of heart is the essence of all other change and it has brought about me a reeducation of the mind.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
The spirit of man is an inward flame a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out.
Margot Asquith
God gives us always strength enough and sense enough for everything He wants us to do.
John Ruskin
What God expects us to attempt He also enables us to achieve.
Stephen Olford
Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms.
H. G. Bohn
Courage is always the surest wisdom.
Wilfred Grenfell
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
G.K. Chesterton
Courage is fire and bullying is smoke.
Benjamin Disraeli
Courage is generosity of the highest order for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.
Charles Caleb Colton
Courage is a peculiar kind of fear.
Charles Kennedy
Courage is clearly a readiness to risk self-humiliation.
Nigel Dennis
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it.
G.K. Chesterton
Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.
Horace Smith
Courage does not consist in calculation but in fighting against chances.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
Being "brave" means doing or facing something frightening. ... Being "fearless" means being without fear.
Penelope Leach
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
Charles Caleb Colton
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature ... is perhaps cowardice.
Charles Lamb
All men would be cowards if they durst.
John Wilmot
There is no such thing as bravery only degrees of fear.
John Wainwright
Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
Cyril Connolly
Courage is never letting your actions be influenced by your fears.
Arthur Koestler
Prudence which degenerates into timidity is very seldom the path to safety.
Viscount Cecil
How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination?
Jeremy Collier
The world is not perishing for the want of clever or talented or well-meaning men. It is perishing for the want of men of courage and resolution.
Robert J. McCracken
Have the courage of your desire.
George R. Gissing
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?
Logan Pearsall Smith