Quotes by British Authors - Page 816

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.
Neil Gaiman
I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
Neil Gaiman
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
Neil Gaiman
In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.
Neil Gaiman
I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life.
Neil Gaiman
Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you.
Neil Gaiman
Sleep my little baby-ohSleep until you wakenWhen you wake you'll see the worldIf I'm not mistaken...Kiss a loverDance a measure,Find your nameAnd buried treasure...Face your lifeIts pain, Its pleasure,Leave no path untaken.
Neil Gaiman
Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
Neil Gaiman
I am the most miserable person who ever lived," he said... "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.
Neil Gaiman
Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure. Face your life, It's pain, It's pleasure, Leave no path untaken.
Neil Gaiman
They were kissing. Put like that, and you could be forgiven for presuming that this was a normal kiss, all lips and skin and possibly even a little tongue. You'd miss how he smiled, how his eyes glowed. And then, after the kiss was done, how he stood, like a man who had just discovered the art of standing and had figured out how to do it better than anyone else who would ever come along.
Neil Gaiman
For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.
Neil Gaiman
They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran's heart pounded in his chest as if it was not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.
Neil Gaiman
So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, just, but you are there like a ghost, a will o' the wisp. Not long ago you burned--your heart burned--in my mind like silver fire. But after that night in the inn it became patchy and dim, and now it is not there at all.""Could it be that the heart that you seek is no longer my own? I have given my heart to another.""The boy? The one in the inn? With the unicorn?""Yes.""You should have let me take it back then, for my sisters and me. We could have been young again, well into the next age of the world. Your boy will break it, or waste it, or lose it. They all do.""Nonetheless, he has my heart. I hope your sisters will not be too hard on you, when you return to them without it.
Neil Gaiman
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
Jane Austen
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
Jane Austen
In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Jane Austen
The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!
Jane Austen
I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
Jane Austen
If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.
Jane Austen
There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison
Jane Austen
Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.
Jane Austen
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.""Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
Jane Austen
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.
Alfred Tennyson
Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Tennyson
I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.
Alfred Tennyson
Half the night I waste in sighs,Half in dreams I sorrow afterThe delight of early skies;In a wakeful dose I sorrowFor the hand, the lips, the eyes,For the meeting of the morrow,The delight of happy laughter,The delight of low replies.
Alfred Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Alfred Tennyson
HopeSmiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...
Alfred Tennyson
I am a part of all that I have met.
Alfred Tennyson
Come friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world.
Alfred Tennyson
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
Alfred Tennyson
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
J.M. Barrie
You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.
J.M. Barrie
If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
J.M. Barrie
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.
J.M. Barrie
Life is a long lesson in humility.
J.M. Barrie
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
J.M. Barrie
The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
J.M. Barrie
Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
J.M. Barrie
I'm not young enough to know everything.
J.M. Barrie
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
James Herriot
Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.
Charles Dickens
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
G.K. Chesterton
Why is the measure of love loss?
Jeanette Winterson
That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that --I didn't let it-- and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.
Kazuo Ishiguro
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Charles Dickens
Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!
Charles Dickens
sometimes you don't need a goal in life, you don't need to know the big picture. you just need to know what you're going to do next!
Sophie Kinsella
Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.
Charlie Chaplin
It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
Graham Greene
You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.
David Nicholls
The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
Ted Hughes
It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.
Henry James
Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.
Graham Greene
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
Agatha Christie
If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.
John Lennon
I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.
John Keats
It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.
Roald Dahl
To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
G.K. Chesterton