Quotes by British Authors - Page 87

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.
D.H. Lawrence
Love? Love is like holding water in your hands. You might have it for a time, but it escapes, leaving you with nothing.
Laura Lam
Shadow crawled across the floor to the yellow foam-rubber pad and climbed onto it, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and closed his eyes, and he held onto nothing, and he held onto dreams.
Neil Gaiman
All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away.
Terry Pratchett
There is nothing at all to be done about it, There is nothing to do about anything.
T.S Eliot
Twas doing nothing was his curse. Is there a vice can plague us worse?
Hannah More
When there hasn't been anything there, nothing can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been.("Out Of The Deep")
Walter de la Mare
Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.
Virginia Woolf
Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I'm not a country person. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.
Ben Aaronovitch
Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.
Kate Atkinson
I know only that it is time for me to be something when I am nothing.
Patrick Branwell Brontë
It is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling. The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to his species.
John Ruskin
If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing
John Buchan
People one doesn't care for, even dislike, make most of us feel uneasy when they appeal against their sentence.
J.L. Carr
Do you remember a time when men were men? When they would do anything for love, for their friends or for their country?'No, I don't, but at least I would love to read about those men!
David Cook
It was a country life, a precious existence.
Fennel Hudson
Whenever people talk in the abstract about the pros and cons of immigration, one should not forget that immigrants are individual human beings whose lives happen not to fit neatly within national borders – and that like all human beings, they are all different.How different, though? Different better, or different worse? Such basic questions underlie whether people are willing to accept outsiders in their midst
Philippe Legrain
He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.
J.R.R. Tolkien
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.
G.K. Chesterton
We have to remember, sometimes the most important history is the history we're making today.
J.K. Rowling
What day is it,?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
A.A. Milne
What day is it?” It’s today, squeaked Piglet. My favorite day, said Pooh.
A.A. Milne
You cannot live your life in ifs and maybes...you cannot live it in week commencings. You live it right here. You live it now.
Stella Newman
- What day is it?- It's today, - squeaked Piglet.- My favorite day, - said Pooh. ("Winnie-the Pooh", A.A. Milne)
A.A. Milne
The beginning is always today.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Refer me to one atheist who denies the existence of God.... Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an atheist is one without God. That is all the 'A' before 'Theist' really means.
George William Foote
If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.
John Fowles
Theist and atheist: The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler
The centre of me is always and eternally in terrible pain ... A searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfiguring and infinite.
Bertrand Russell
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.
G.K. Chesterton
I cannot follow you Christians; for you try to crawl through your life upon your knees, while I stride through mine on my feet.
Charles Bradlaugh
Those who say that I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.
Christopher Hitchens
Vexis listened, then shook her head, her eyes full of sorrow. ‘YOU are the fool! You cannot rob people of their beliefs and expect them to just accept it. Even now, I mourn the death of Avanti every day. Even though I now know she was never real. The idea of Avanti was real. Serving Avanti gave me a purpose, I felt she was guiding and encouraging me. Now I have nothing, I am reduced to simply “making it up as I go along”. I hate you Brael. I will never forgive you for what you did.’Brael took a deep breath. ‘You were always making it up as you went along. You just didn’t know it. People need to take responsibility for their actions. There is one person guiding me, and that is me. I will live as long as I can and I will try to leave this world a better place for my presence. That is enough purpose for all.
Martyn Stanley
My father lost me to the Beast at cards
Angela Carter
A lady decidedly. Fast? perhaps. Original? undoubtedly. Worth knowing? rather.
George Egerton
I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man’s assertion of power and control, but if he didn’t think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means.
Abigail Tarttelin
Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious.
Abigail Tarttelin
...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed
Kat Banyard
Additionally, many widows took over family shops or businesses- and, not uncommonly, ran them better than their dead husbands. Y.pestis [black death germ] turns out to have been something of a feminist.
John Kelly
Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked-are in fact very precised adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the only kind of Universe that makes our existence possible.
Arthur C. Clarke
Where there's possibility there is also hope.
Gareth P. Jones
Ensuring possibility is kept alive is imperative.
Steven Redhead
Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.
G. M. Trevelyan
A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty.
Mark Lawrence
Listen, Sam, and everyone, you need to know something so it won’t freak you out: Pack Leader can speak. I mean, human words. Like Smart-Girl Barbie there was saying, he’s some kind of mutant or whatever. I know you think I’m probably crazy.”She had Hermit Jim’s tin cup now and used it to scoop up another helping of wonderful, wonderful pudding. Blondie—Astrid—was opening a can of fruit cocktail.“What do you know about the FAYZ?” Astrid asked.Lana stopped eating and stared at her. “The what?”Astrid shrugged and looked embarrassed. “That’s what people are calling it. The Fallout Alley Youth Zone. FAYZ.”“What does that mean?”“Have you seen the barrier?”She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen the barrier. I touched the barrier, which, by the way, is not a good idea.”Sam said, “As far as we can tell, it goes clear around in a big circle. Or maybe a sphere. We think the center is the power plant. It seems like a ten-mile radius from there, you know, twenty miles across.”“Circumference of 62.83 miles, with an area of 314.159 square miles,” Astrid said.“Point 159,” Quinn echoed from his corner. “That’s important.”“It’s basically pi,” Astrid said. “You know, 3.14159265…. Okay, I’ll stop.”Lana hadn’t stopped being hungry. She took a scoop of the fruit cocktail. “Sam, you think the power plant caused it?”Sam shrugged, and then he hesitated, surprised. Lana guessed that he felt no pain in his shoulder. “No one knows. All of a sudden every single person over the age of fourteen disappears and there’s this barrier and people…animals…”Lana slowly absorbed this new information. “You mean all the adults? They’re gone?”“Poof,” Quinn said. “They ditched. They blinked out. They vacated. They took the off-ramp. They cut a hole. They emigrated. Adults and teenagers. Nothing left but kids.”“I’ve done all I can to strengthen the door,” Edilio announced. “But all I have is nails. Someone can break it in eventually.”“Maybe they didn’t all ditch,” Lana said. “Maybe we did.”Astrid said, “That’s definitely one of the possibilities, not that it makes any real difference. It’s effectively the same thing.
Michael Grant
The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did.
Virginia Woolf
Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).
Christopher Hitchens
He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face.
Helen Simonson
When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible.
Salman Rushdie
Do not think it impossible just because it has never happened.- Friar Tuck
Stephen R. Lawhead
You never listen to me anymore. Before, if I was talking to you, you would always listen. But now you have no time to even talk to me.'Yeah... Has Keaty told you not to eat the Stew?''Richard!'I frowned 'What?''You are not listening to me!''… Oh. Well I'm sorry. I've got a lot on my mind.''Not me.''Huh?''I am not on your mind.''Uh... of course you are.''I am not' she poked me in the ribs. 'I think you do not love me anymore.'I looked at her in astonishment '… Are you serious?''Very serious' she said petulantly'But... I mean... do we have to talk about this right now?''Yes. It must be now. Etienne is not here, and maybe soon I will never see you agai...''Francoise!' I hissed. 'Keep it down!''Maybe I should keep it down but maybe I should not. In the dope field, when I would not be quiet, you pushed me to the ground and held me tightly'. She giggled. 'It was very exciting'.
Alex Garland
You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love.
Ford Madox Ford
In Nepal, the quality of conversation is much more important than accuracy of the content. Maybe we get overexcited about information in England?
Jane Wilson-Howarth
I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself.
Theodore Zeldin
It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned exchange of talk. Love was only a minor accompaniment.
D.H. Lawrence
Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part.
T.H. White
Everything that happens now in the online world is part of a conversation. The problem with this (if we can call it a problem) is that this conversation takes place frequently asynchronously and often across platforms.
David Amerland
Stephen Tennant is the most sparkling talker who ever comes to my house, and perhaps the most amusing. He dances like the will-o'-the-wisp where other people stick in the mud. Though his really kindred spirits are the most exotic people he can find, he also greatly enjoys a talk with some extremely commonplace person, when he pretends that he thinks they mean something which they never thought of in their lives. He can be by turns poetic, malicious, and nonsensical. His talk is very pictorial and he handles words as if they were pait on a brush. When Stephen is alone with one friend he is often drawn to speak of very grave and profound subjects, and then he becomes unhappy, for he is never sure about what he loves and believes in, and would like to love and believe in so much.
Edith Olivier
One never said the things one wanted — one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense that one had to say something.
Henry James
Her English was sweet, an effort for her, anachronistic and unpractised.
Ruth Ahmed