Quotes by British Authors - Page 76

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
Samuel Butler
Shame arises from the fear of man conscience from the fear of God.
Samuel Johnson
The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct not by their professions.
Junius
There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing at once but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.
Lord Chesterfield
Society is built upon trust.
Robert South
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Choice of attention to pay attention to this and ignore that is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.
W.H. Auden
When one is learning one should not think of play and when one is at play one should not think of learning.
Lord Chesterfield
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
Walter Bagehot
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
G.K. Chesterton
All good is gained by those whose thought and life are kept pointed close to one main thing not scattered abroad upon a thousand.
Stephen McKenna
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of everything.
Samuel Johnson
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
Bertrand Russell
When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything each of them generally gets that which he likes least.
Alexander Pope
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
Isaac Newton
No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.
Charles C. Grevvile
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson
The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident and the most wonderful of all things in life.
Hugh Walpole
Some say compared to Bononcini That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle: Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!
John Byrom
Those who complain most are most to be complained of.
Matthew Henry
Tis always morning somewhere in the world.
Richard Hengest Horne
We have lived and loved together Through many changing years We have shared each other's gladness And wept each other's tears.
Charles Jefferys
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
Henny Youngman
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have the older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Agatha Christie
When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
Harry Burns
[Being in love] is something like poetry. Certainly you can analyze it and expound its various senses and intentions but there is always something left over mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.
Muriel Spark
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her . . . but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
W Somerset Maugham
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
Winston Churchill
Nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.
Benjamin Disraeli
What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings Idler or bungler or both he is willing To fork out his copper and pocket your shilling.
Ebenezer Elliott
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Aneurin Bevan
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous you get knocked down by traffic from both sides.
Margaret Thatcher
Men like snails lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor
Moderation in war is imbecility.
Admiral John Fisher
Sometimes success is due less to ability than zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.
Charles Buxton
Nothing of worthy or weight can be achieved with half a mind with a faint heart and with a lame endeavor.
Isaac Barrow
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
Lord Chesterfield
To have no loyalty is to have no dignity and in the end no manhood.
Peter Taylor Forsyth
Nothing's far when one wants to get there.
Queen Marie of Rumania
Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored. Better to die than to live in slavery.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Victory at all costs victory in spite of all terror victory however long and hard the road may be for without victory there is no survival.
Winston Churchill
More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.
Benjamin Disraeli
Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.
William E. Gladstone
Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.
Charles Kingsley
If dirt was trumps what hands you would hold!
Charles Lamb
Certainly this is a duty not a sin. "Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness."
John Wesley
The ideal committee is one with me as chairman and two other members in bed with flu.
Lord Milverton
Whenas in silks my Julia goes Then then methinks how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes!
Robert Herrick
Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.
V.S. Pritchett
The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.
Samuel Johnson
Civilization is a movement - not a condition a voyage - not a harbour.
Arnold Toynbee
Civilization is a movement and not a condition a voyage and not a harbor.
Arnold Toynbee
A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond and on these faces there are no smiles.
Hilaire Belloc
We are all afraid - for our confidence for the future for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man every civilization has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one has made the Ascent of Man.
Jacob Bronowski
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S Eliot
Let us humour if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.
W.H. Auden
We are in the first age since the dawn of civilization in which people have dared to think it practicable to make the benefits of civilization available to the whole human race.
Arnold Toynbee
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.
Arnold Toynbee