Quotes by British Authors - Page 794

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.
P.G. Wodehouse
Why do humans never do as they're told? Someone should replace you all with robots. No, on second though, they shouldn't, bad idea.
Jonathan Morris
Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground.
J.K. Rowling
You see, I, unlike you, have been made a prefect, which means that I, unlike you, have the power to hand out punishments.”“Yeah,” said Harry, “but you, unlike me, are a git.
J.K. Rowling
We are no longer the knights who say Ni! We are now the knights who say ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoom-boing!
Graham Chapman
I never know," Harry called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, "What's the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?""Stalagmite's got an 'm' in it," said Hagrid.
J.K. Rowling
But you can't stay with people because of guilt. Or because they can drive a speedboat.
Sophie Kinsella
Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.
Terry Pratchett
Forget men, I want to marry my MacBook. It’s dependable, reliable and you can even go shopping with it.
Alexandra Potter
There's something different about you," he says."I've started styling my hair differently," I laugh."Oh. I thought it was that you were three feet taller, a hell of a lot broader, look like a werewolf, and are naked expect for that bit of cloth around your waist. But you're right - it's the hair.
Darren Shan
But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
G.K. Chesterton
Nothing is safe from you. If I were to court a girl who lived on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, sooner or later— probably sooner— I’d look up to see you swooping overhead on a broomstick. In fact, by now I’d be disappointed in you if I didn’t see you.” “Are you off to the iceberg today?” Sophie retorted.
Diana Wynne Jones
Running ain't no bad thing. Leastways if you run in the right direction.
Mark Lawrence
Here's something for you to remember; you might have been born into money, but you came out of a vagina the same as everyone else. Popping out of one that's rich doesn't make you anything but lucky, or susceptible to being stuck your own arse. Whichever.
Suzanne Wright
It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
P.G. Wodehouse
A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey.
Banksy
Holy mother of rectangles.
Dan Howell
The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
John Maynard Keynes
And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.
Jane Austen
One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
Douglas Adams
I'm about as intimidating as a butterfly.
Dan Howell
Wizard Howl," said Wizard Suliman. "I must apologize for trying to bite you so often. In the normal way, I wouldn't dream of setting teeth in a fellow countryman.
Diana Wynne Jones
This was supposed to be yesterday. I was sitting on the Cardiff/London train, supposedly about to write this very column, and realising something quite terrible. My head was entirely empty. A vast echoing void. Bigger on the inside, but with nothing in it. You could drop a pebble in my brain and wait for an hour to hear it land. No actually, you couldn't - that would be aggressive and unhelpful, so keep your damn pebbles to yourself.
Steven Moffat
To me you are a work of art, and I would give you my heart - that's if I had one.
Morrissey
Don't be stupid, it's a flying house!
J.K. Rowling
Whenever I get that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.
P.G. Wodehouse
I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so.""It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.
Jasper Fforde
What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?
P.G. Wodehouse
What a strange family you are! Is your name Lettie too?
Diana Wynne Jones
Sir Beldevere: What makes you think she's a witch? Peasant 3: Well, she turned me into a newt! Sir Beldevere: A newt? Peasant 3: [meekly after a long pause] ... I got better. Crowd: [shouts] Burn her anyway!
Graham Chapman
Tut, Tut, looks like rain
A.A. Milne
I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by Mexicans.
Roald Dahl
As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.
P.G. Wodehouse
Rosie get off your desk, and please put your beard away.
Louise Rennison
I am perfectly qualified to give you an injection. You're not going to tell me you're afraid of a little prick?""I wouldn't call you that...
Anthony Horowitz
I don't mind if you forget me.Having learned my lesson,I never left an impression on anyone.
Morrissey
Revenge is sweet and not fattening.
Alfred Hitchcock
CUSTOMER: Do you have this children's book I've heard about? It's supposed to be very good. It's called "Lionel Richie and the Wardrobe.
Jen Campbell
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?
George Deacon
I had a polynomial once. My doctor removed it.
Michael Grant
Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.
Terry Pratchett
Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar.
Terry Pratchett
My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first
Douglas Adams
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition ofthe word "Infinite".Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, atotally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just sobig that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy.Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringlyhuge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
Douglas Adams
Bluestar blinked. "There are cats who would argue that there should never have been a fifth Clan in the forest at all. Why are there four oaks at Fourtrees, if not to stand for the four Clans?"Firestar gazed up at the massive oak trees, then back at Bluestar. Fury pure as a lighting flash rushed through his body. "Are you mouse-brained?" he snarled. "Are you telling me SkyClan had to leave because there weren't enough trees?
Erin Hunter
I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!
Jasper Fforde
I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.
Jerome K. Jerome
I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.
Morrissey
You thought I was a werewolf?" Dervish asks."Yes" I answer hollowly."You ass.
Darren Shan
No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?--Poirot
Agatha Christie
It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.
Terry Pratchett
A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?
Roald Dahl
Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.
G.K. Chesterton
Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. The latest one was a lullaby.Marvin droned,Now the world has gone to bed,Darkness won't engulf my head,I can see in infrared,He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.Now I lay me down to sleep,Try to count electric sheep,Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
Douglas Adams
Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.
The Kinks
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
T.S Eliot
The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.
Banksy
Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence.
Jasper Fforde
Merlin’s beard.
J.K. Rowling