Quotes by British Authors - Page 793

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
Alain de Botton
We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without form, shade without colour,Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
T.S Eliot
If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.
Agatha Christie
You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
Alan W. Watts
The menu is not the meal.
Alan W. Watts
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
George Orwell
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
Stephen Hawking
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
J.K. Rowling
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.
J.R.R. Tolkien
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
Bertrand Russell
Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
Alan W. Watts
It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
Stephen Fry
If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.
Keith Richards
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
J.R.R. Tolkien
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter
John Keats
A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent.
William Blake
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
Douglas Adams
You only live twice:Once when you are bornAnd once when you look death in the face
Ian Fleming
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins
my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be...
Jane Austen
One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.
Stephen Hawking
Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.
P.G. Wodehouse
College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?
David Wood
An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one - black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door?
Terry Pratchett
I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology.
P.G. Wodehouse
Have you met the French? My...GOD they know how to party!
Steven Moffat
Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart.
Neil Gaiman
I commend my soul to any god that can find it.
Terry Pratchett
Compromise is a stalling between two fools.
Stephen Fry
Harry, we saw Uranus up close!” said Ron, still giggling feebly. “Get it, Harry? We saw Uranus — ha ha ha —
J.K. Rowling
Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him. Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.
A.A. Milne
They said I was a valued customer, now they send me hate mail.
Sophie Kinsella
Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Douglas Adams
And so the Universe ended.
Douglas Adams
I see Atheists are fighting and killing each other again, over who doesn't believe in any God the most. Oh, no..wait.. that never happens.
Ricky Gervais
One can never have enough socks
J.K. Rowling
Bursar?""Yes, Archchancellor?""You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?""Me? No, Archchancellor.""Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.
Terry Pratchett
When danger reared its ugly head, He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Graham Chapman
We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
Douglas Adams
The dead are way more organized than the living.
China Miéville
This book will prove the following ten facts:1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there.2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch.3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity.4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight.5. Music does not always sooth the troubled beast.6. An Englishman's home is his castle.7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.8. One black eye deserves another.9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm.10. It pays to increase your word power.
Diana Wynne Jones
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
Samuel Johnson
The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort.
Terry Pratchett
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please.
Hugh MacLeod
Of all the consumer products, chewing gum is perhaps the most ridiculous: it literally has no nourishment – you just chew it to give yourself something to do with your stupid idiot Western mouth.Half the world is starving, and the other’s going, ‘I don’t actually need any nutrition, but it would be good to masticate, just to keep my mind off things.
Russell Brand
It begins in the heart...and it hurts when it's true.It only hurts because it's true.
Morrissey
Juliet's version of cleanliness was next to godliness, which was to say it was erratic, past all understanding and was seldom seen.
Terry Pratchett
Death doesn't care about personalities - he's more interested in meeting quotas.
Jasper Fforde
What's the point of being a grown-up if you don't get to be immature?
Steven Moffat
There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of man-made evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf. These dogs advance deliberately, purposefully, the wilderness made flesh, their teeth yellow, their breath a-stink, while in the distance their owners witter, "He's an old soppy really, just poke him if he's a nuisance," and in the green of their eyes the red campfires of the Pleistocene gleam and flicker.
Neil Gaiman
There must be something wrong with those people who think Audrey Hepburn doesn’t perspire, hiccup or sneeze, because they know that’s not true. I n fact, I hiccup more than most.
Audrey Hepburn
My geekness is a-quivering.
Jack Thorne
Oh Blimey O‘Reilly's pantyhose...what is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on.It's the bloody moon, for God's sake, Will, get a grip!!
Louise Rennison
I'm dying!" Malfoy yelled, as the class panicked. "I'm dying, look at me! It's killed me!
J.K. Rowling
Right, you've got a crooked sort of cross..." He consulted Unfogging the Future. "That means you're going to have 'trials and suffering' — sorry about that — but there's a thing that could be the sun... hang on... that means 'great happiness'... so you're going to suffer but be very happy...""You need your Inner Eye tested, if you ask me," said Ron, and they both had to stifle their laughs as Professor Trelawney gazed in their direction.
J.K. Rowling
That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger,” said Snape coolly. “Five more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all.
J.K. Rowling
Mr Lorry asks the witness questions:Ever been kicked? Might have been.Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.
Charles Dickens