Quotes by British Authors - Page 96

Suppose boredom is a backstairs to liberation — insignificant, and so often overlooked. No one who has not known its higher degrees can claim to have lived. Not the Relative Boredom of long waiting at junctions for railway connections on the way to visit friends—or the rashly accepted week-end with acquaintances—the reviewing of a dull book. In such Relative Boredom the "wasting-of-time"-feeling only heightens the enjoyment of the coming escape, the anticipation of which sustains us meanwhile. Absolute Boredom is rather the pain of nausea, it is the loss of one's livelihood as for the pianist who loses his hands, the unsatiable desire for what we know makes us sick, it is the Great Drought, the "Carnal physic for the sick soul", the Dark Night of the Soul after the climbing of Mount Carmel, it is the pillar of salt, the exile from the land which is no more, the Sin against the Holy Ghost, the break-up of patterns, the horror that waits alone in the night, the entry into the desert where Death mocks by serving one one's daily food and one cannot bear hut to keep the darkness of one's own shadow before one for the very brightness of the light that reveals the universal emptiness. Do not try to turn back now — here in the desert perhaps there are doors open—in the cool woods they are overgrown, and in the busy cities they have built over them.
Nanamoli Thera
And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on.
Douglas Adams
Just as, at least in one religion, accidia is the first of the cardinal sins, so bordom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.
Ian Fleming
I wore a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I had somehow missed a plateful of cold sausages on the previous 4,000 excursions. Then, for no obvious reason, I decided to buy a footstool.
Jeremy Clarkson
I took ten days off and by 11 o’clock on the first morning I had drunk fourteen cups of coffee, read all the newspapers and the Guardian and then… and then what? By lunchtime I was so bored that I decided to hang a few pictures. So I found a hammer, and later a man came to replaster the bits of wall I had demolished. Then I tried to fix the electric gates, which work only when there’s an omega in the month. So I went down the drive with a spanner, and later another man came to put them back together again. I was just about to start on the Aga, which had broken down on Christmas Eve, as they do, when my wife took me on one side by my earlobe and explained that builders do not, on the whole, spend their spare time writing, so writers should not build on their days off. It’s expensive and it can be dangerous, she said.
Jeremy Clarkson
Boredom comes simply from ignorance and lack of imagination.
Susan Ertz
Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Bertrand Russell
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.
G.K. Chesterton
Boredom forces you to ring people you haven’t seen for eighteen years and halfway through the conversation you remember why you left it so long. Boredom means you start to read not only mail-order catalogues but also the advertising inserts that fall on the floor. Boredom gives you half a mind to get a gun and go berserk in the local shopping centre, and you know where this is going. Eventually, boredom means you will take up golf.
Jeremy Clarkson
You've already said you were going to kill me," Alex said, "but I didn't think that meant you were going to bore me to death.
Anthony Horowitz
The Beatles saved the world from boredom.
George Harrison
Resorting to lying or cheating in any competition amounts to conceding defeat.
George Hammond
Just got to fnafflebrump caddwallame, all right?" Edie says, and no one pays attention. She learned at Lady Gravely's that nonsense which can be misheard is a very good way to lie without getting caught. People just insert whatever they think you must be doing, and - having lied to themselves on your behalf - are disinclined to check up on you.
Nick Harkaway
Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.
Winston S. Churchill
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome
She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.
J.B. Priestley
Corporate advertising is simply expensive lying dressed up as brainwashing
Dean Cavanagh
Clovis believed that if a lie was worth telling it was worth telling well.
Saki
As much as you might hate me, you can’t change the fact that I know you, Lily. And no matter how many times you say you’re fine and everything is good, you should remember that I know when you’re lying.
Rachel Spanswick
Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion…
Jane Austen
And once when we were walking on Bredon Hill, we met a bedraggled and exhausted fox. 'Oh, poor thing,' Jack said. 'What shall we do when the hunt comes up? I can already hear them. Oh, I know -- I have an idea.' He cupped his hands and shouted to the first riders, "Hallo, yoicks, gone that way," and pointed in the direction opposite to the one the fox had taken. The whole hunt followed his directions. There followed a long discussion about when lying was morally justifiable, but he boasted delightedly later to my wife that he had saved the life of a poor fox and showed no trace of guilt.
George Sayer
Through years of experience I’ve discovered that a liar will always look into his drink when telling a lie. But he doesn’t have a drink in a cab, and even if he did I’d have no idea as to whether he were looking into it or not
Karl Wiggins
It's not lying when you do it to officers!
Terry Pratchett
Now please don't refer to yourself ass some woman I fuck occasionally because, quite frankly, it makes me mad, and you really wouldn't like me when I"m angry.
E.L. James
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
Idries Shah
I believe in mess, tears, pain, self-abasement, loss of self-respect, nakedness. Not caring doesn’t seem much different from not loving.
Tom Stoppard
The dead know everything, but don't give a damn.
Joanne Harris
If I really care for you, if I try to think myself into your position and orientation, then the world is bettered by my effort at understanding and comprehension. If you respond to my effort by trying to extend the same sympathy and understanding to others in turn, then the betterment of the world has been minutely but significantly extended. We want people to feel with us, more than to act for us.
George Eliot
The right mixture of caring and not caring - I suppose that's what love is.
James Hilton
One thing I’ve learned, my friend, is every person you meet has different needs, and when we wish to be a valuable part of the person’s life, we must learn them.” His mouth quirked in a wry grin. “I suppose that’s the trick, isn’t it? Caring for a person in the way they require, even when it’s not how we’d wish to. from Miss Whitaker Opens Her Heart
Jennifer Moore
I find that when I come out of the library I’m in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of li
Tracy Chevalier
You know there's always things in life that you have to do despite the fact that you know for certain the outcome is going to be messy, painful, humiliating, or all three.
Ben Aaronovitch
When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand- she's as good as any other; they'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.
Thomas Hardy
Where was Sam?It hit her full force then, the shocking realization. Was this how Sam felt? Was this how he’d been feeling since the beginning? All eyes on him? Everyone waiting for a decision? Even as people doubted and criticized and attacked?She wanted to be sick. She had been there for so much of it. But she hadn’t been the one. She hadn’t been the one making those choices.And now…she was.“I don’t know what to do,” Astrid said. “I don’t know.
Michael Grant
We make our decisions, and then our decisions turn around and make us.
F.W. Boreham
Here lies the challenge in finding good salespeople. You need excellent empathizers who aren't so empathetic they can't close a sale. And you need people with strong ego needs who can still take a moment to figure out what another person wants. They must be aggressive enough to close, but not so aggressive they put people off. Too much empathy and you'll be a nice guy finishing last. Too much ego drive and you'll be scorching earth everywhere you go. Not enough of either and you shouldn't be in sales at all. It's a miracle anyone can do this job.
Philip Delves Broughton
We always hurt the ones we love, darling. You’ll have to tell her you’re sorry. And mean it and give her time. - Grace Trevelyan-Grey to Christian Grey
E.L. James
In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)
Christopher Hitchens
Dead men's words are so much more powerful than those of the living
Jeffrey Archer
When people can afford necessities in life, an increase in income dones not result in a significantly happier life.
Richard Wiseman
I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan
George Orwell
I told her that I can't be doing with the Wonder part of these trips, but she said it should be the icing on the cake... I've never liked wedding cake due to the amount of icing, but then imagine a wedding cake without it; just a dark, stodgy, horrible dry sponge. The icing covers up the mess, and that's how I feel about most of the Wonders. They use them to get people to visit a place that you probably wouldn't think about visiting.
Karl Pilkington
My dear Copperfield,” he replied. “To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,” said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, “the mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit! A great pursuit!
Charles Dickens
I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.
Charlie Chaplin
Better foolish and honest than clever and false.
Paula Brackston
Violence is the repartee of the illiterate
Alan Brien
What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence, the question is what you can make people believe that you have done.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Young, animated, entirely off your guard, and thoughtless of consequences, Imagination took the reins; and Reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to the race of so eccentric and flighty a companion. How rapid was then my Evelina's progress through those regions of fancy and passion whither her new guide conducted her!-She saw Lord Orville at a ball,-and he was the most amiable of men! -She met him again at another,-and he had every virtue under Heaven!
Fanny Burney
The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same as the difference between a beautiful and a plain woman --a matter of millimetres.
Ian Fleming
sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning
Jane Austen
Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge
Jane Austen
Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy
Jane Austen
Honor is kind of what you get when you weaponize manners ...
Jasper Fforde
There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil - a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.
Jane Austen
She had married him in order to be safe from the chaos. He had married her, she now understood, for the same reason. They were the last two people on earth who could make anyone safe from anything.
Kate Atkinson
Change happens internally. That's where books go too. Therein lies the power.
Nina Joshi Ramsey
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Charles Dickens
I fail to remember, the mind has fuses.
B.S. Johnson
The trouble with Lucious," he said, putting his feet up on the desk after this cousin has gone," is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.
Robert Harris
When I venture to point out the unfairness of this, I am reminded of the second item on my list. Apparently the only acceptable destiny for a young female mem​b​er of the house of Windsor is to marry into another of the royal houses that still seem to litter Europe, even though there are precious few reigning monarchs these days. it seems that even a very minor Windsor like myself is a desirable commodity for those wishing a tenuous alliance with Britain at this unsettled time. I am constantly being reminded that is is my duty to make a good match with some half-lunatic, buck-toothed, chinless, spinele​s​s​​​, and utterly awful European royal, thus cementing ties with a potential enemy. My cousin Alex did this, poor thing. I have learned from her tragic example.
Rhys Bowen