Quotes by British Authors - Page 779

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
G.K. Chesterton
A DEAD STATESMANI could not dig: I dared not rob:Therefore I lied to please the mob.Now all my lies are proved untrueAnd I must face the men I slew.What tale shall serve me here amongMine angry and defrauded young?from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18
Rudyard Kipling
A writer inevitably - and less directly this applies to all the arts - about contemporary events, and his impulse is to tell what he believes to be truth. But no government, no big organisation, will pay for the truth.
George Orwell
Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive luxury in our life—and happy the man who has been able to enjoy it from his very child hood.
Friedrich Max Müller
She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression.And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
Joseph Conrad
And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
Joseph Conrad
Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
George Gordon Byron
We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religions opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but an anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
E.M. Forster
It doesn't matter what you think about consciousness, higher truths, or different dimensions - it's what you do and what you are that counts.
Belsebuub
He, who thought it necessary to maintain himself in her good graces, strove to console her under her disappointment by committing a little violence upon truth.
Matthew Lewis
We are often jealous of our little secrets, though to another ear they generally convey neither profit nor entertainment.
Eden Phillpotts
I learned regret in the ruins of Tarbfhlaith. I regretted that ambition had ruled my heart instead of affection for my kin. And with the lesson of regret came the gratitude for having life still to move my lips and limbs, and to speak kind words to and embrace those I may not see again on this sweet-smelling earth. I learned that I cannot wait to love what is in my presence, for it or I may well be gone tomorrow. To some, such as Giannon, this lesson poisons the heart with bitterness. But such bitterness has no value and is, in fact, cowardly. For bitterness risks nothing.
Kate Horsley
The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain physical miracle could ever be. But never mind that. The important thing was that, when I did see the stars (riotously darting in all directions according to the caprice of their own wild natures, yet in every movement confirming the law), the whole tangled horror that had tormented me finally presented itself to me in its truth and beautiful shape. And I knew that the first, blind stage of my childhood had ended.
Olaf Stapledon
I am no faint-heart when it comes to the unpleasant truth. Indeed I have always taken a bracing sort of pleasure in facing it.
Jude Morgan
The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.
Max Born
Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence — either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous ‘embarkation’ and heroic conquest, or else to annihilate the persona and transcend the ego in an obscure rapture of sensuality, a frenzy of romantic passion, more creditably, in the mutual charity of the perfect marriage.
Aldous Huxley
...the wise words of a friend and guide rang in my head. 'How would you distinguish a true servant of God from a traitor?...You should take especial notice of how a person speaks, not of other things, but of God.
Harry Blamires
He was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life."
R. Bosworth Smith
We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
C.S. Lewis
The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
E.M. Forster
This is perhaps the hardest truth of any to grasp. Do we wake up every morning amazed that we are loved by God?
David Ford
You know, a few months ago, I made a terrible mistake. I realized something, and instead of crushing the thought the moment it came I... I let it hang on, and now I know it to be true. And I'm afraid it's stuck in my head forever. These are the best days of our lives. It's a terrible thing to know, but I know it.
Richard Curtis
To utter a word? no that will only heavy the air you breath, for your eyes speak more then your pretty mouth
William Brade
Thoreau was an idiot.
Bill Bryson
Knowledge isn't truth. It's just mindless agreement. You agree with me, I agree with someone else - we all have knowledge. We haven't come any closer to the truth. You can never understand anything by agreeing, by making definitions. Only by turning over the possibilities. That's called thinking. If I say "I know", I stop thinking. As long as I keep thinking, I come to understand. That way, I might approach some truth.
Terry Johnson
It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence. The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.
Jane Austen
How gleefully life shreds our well crafted plans.
David Mitchell
Unfortunately it's also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it's invisible and you don't notice its presence until it's gone, and then you're sorry.
Charles Stross
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Samuel Johnson
Look after goodness and truth, beauty will look after herself.
Eric Gill
Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.
John R.W. Stott
Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.
Neil Gaiman
I tell you the truth, a man may not make himself king; only the blessing of him who holds the kingship can elevate a man to that high place. For sovereignty is a sacred trust that may not be bartered or sold; still less may it be stolen or taken by force.
Stephen R. Lawhead
The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
Alain de Botton
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
George Eliot
The truth is, it's not the act that I'm scared of, but giving myself so entirely to someone. As long as there are lines to draw and boundaries to cling to, I can pretend that I'm safe from the wanting that threatens to consume me. I'm separate, still all my own. But after...What then? What comes after, when he has that much of me, to do with as he chooses? When I have him. Will it ever be enough?
Abigail Haas
Chainschains that hold me to the groundchains that keep me solidly boundchains that tether my heart to youchains that only one truth...
Muse
How initially 'to get her in the sack' and subsequently to avoid 'her giving you the sack' are not identical dilemmas faced by the male species, but they sure have a bizarre habit of being bedfellows
Alex Morritt
We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
Herbert Spencer
Ridicule is the best test of truth.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
May I have a few friends and many books - both true.
Arthur Ernest Cowley
Diets are essentially training courses in how to feel fat and feel like a failure.
Paul McKenna
Fury...sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal....drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths
Salman Rushdie
The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute.
W.H. Auden
The truth is not so important as the leaving of it behind.
Clare Francis
When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.
Kingsley Amis
You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.
Arthur Conan Doyle
We are the decisive factor in the affairs of the universe.
Derek Prince
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
G.K. Chesterton
No one, from pontiffs to professors, has a monopoly on the truth. In the end, we are all just travelers--not scientists or mystics or any one brand of thinker. By nature, we are scientists and mystics, reductionists and holists, left-brained and right-brained, mixed up creatures trying to catch an occasional glimpse of the truth. The best we can do is to be tolerant of both sides of our nature--knowing that these reflect the twin aspect of the universe--and learn from whatever wisdom is offered.
David Darling
It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.
Neil Gaiman
Ο θάνατος είναι πάντα από μόνος του μια απόδειξη ειλικρίνειας.
Graham Greene
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.
Terry Pratchett
Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.
Gary Oldman
A man without pleasure is a man without any idea what life is about
Michael Grant
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill
Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate.
Perry Anderson