British Author Quotes

J. K. Rowling

C. S. Lewis

A. A. Milne

William Ralph Inge

Harold Pinter

Salman Rushdie

Enid Blyton

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

Adrian Mitchell

Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.

A great enormous thing, like — like nothing. A huge big — well, like a — I don't know — like an enormous big nothing.

Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent.

William Ralph Inge

Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!

Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.

When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation.

Lady Margaret Sackville

London is a city of clubs and private houses. You have to be a member.

The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion.

We only have one life to live, and must go on with it to the end, that if we feel it is meaningless, then we ourselves must give it meaning.

When a writer admits that he has an affection for something which he has written, it is high time to pray for his soul.

Law is error, you see. It's an attempt to write down a lot of things everyone ought to know anyway.

All the soppy talk about the inner child has not laid to rest deep fantasies about the inner ogre.

You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

Bernard Cornwell

Wouldst thou view the Lion's den? Search afar from haunts of men — Where the reed-encircled rill, Oozes from the rocky hill, By its verdure far descried 'Mid the desert brown and wide.

It is the rank and file - the average woman - for whom the world has opened up so astonishingly.

Mary Augusta Ward

If we win the Welsh Heartland, then we win Wales; if we lose the Welsh Heartland, it is not Wales that we win.

he was undoing the wooden box, and he took out the silver sword. "This is the best of my treasures," he said. "It will bring me luck. And it will bring you luck, because you gave it to me. I don't tell anybody my name - it is not safe. But because you gave me the sword and I didn't borrow it, I will tell you." He whispered. "It is Jan."

Ian Serraillier

I cannot remember a time when I was not enraptured or tortured by words. Always there have been words which, sometimes for their sound alone, sometimes for their sound and sense, I would not use. From a loathing of their grossness or sickliness, their weight or want of weight. Their inexactitude, their feeling of acidity or insipidity. Their action, not only on the intelligence but on the nerves, was instant...

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.

I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Freedom came in strange forms and from unexpected directions.

As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.

A man who so much resembled a Baked Alaska—sweet, warm and gungy on the outside, hard and cold within.

Of C. P. Snow

To be sympathetic without discrimination is so very debilitating.