British Author Quotes

J. K. Rowling

C. S. Lewis

A. A. Milne

William Ralph Inge

Harold Pinter

Salman Rushdie

Enid Blyton

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

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

Adrian Mitchell

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.

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

William Ralph Inge

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

Lady Margaret Sackville

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

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

Strew your gladness on earth's bed,
So be merry, so be dead.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

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.

War is only glorious when you buy it in the Daily Mail and enjoy it at the breakfast table. It goes splendidly with bacon and eggs. Real war is the final limit of damnable brutality, and that's all there is in it.

G. A. Studdert Kennedy

Some day your head won't find my lap so easily. Trust is a habit you'll soon break.

Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more desirable than anything in the world. If you strike us down now, we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom: if our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it with a better deed.

Woods are to us anything but solitudes - they are populous and inexhaustible worlds, where creatures that mock the grasp but not the mind, a matchless phantasmagoria, flit before us; alternately make us merry with their pleasant follies, delight us with their romantic grandeur and beauty, and elevate our hearts with their sublime sentiments.

Ye generous maids, revenge your sex's wrong; Let not the mean destroyer e'er approach Your sacred charms. Now muster all your pride, Contempt and scorn, that, shot from Beauty's eye, Confounds the mighty impudent, and smites The front unknown to shame.

But I didn't dare. That has always been my trouble. I've never dared enough.

Michael Morpurgo

All trades did shew their skill in this, Each wise an Engineer: The Mairess took the tool in hand, The maids the stones did bear.

Alexander Brome

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

John Drinkwater

He gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.

Of Samuel Johnson

Fear, guilt, despair, and moon-struck phrensy rush
On voluntary death: the wise and brave,
When the fierce storms of fortune round 'em roar,
Combat the billows with redoubled force:
Then, if they perish ere the port is gain'd,
They sink with decent pride; and from the deep
Honour retrieves them, bright as rising stars.

It is always so, every pleasure comes exactly half an hour too late - Life! Life!

Do people who wave at trains Wave at the driver, or at the train itself? Or, do people who wave at trains Wave at the passengers? Those hurtling strangers, The unidentifiable flying faces?

Among the poor, the approach of dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and natural composure, which it is consolatory to contemplate, and which is as far removed from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing to lay down the burden of e weary life, in the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality.

When we are conscious of the least comparative merit in ourselves, we should take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real defect; to be elated or vain upon it is showing your money before people in want.

Expression, child of soul! I fondly trace
Thy strong enchantment, when the poet's lyre,
The painter's pencil cathch thy sacred fire,
And beauty wakes for thee her touching grace

Helen Maria Williams

It normally happens that if you put two words together, or two syllables together, one of them will attract more weight, more emphasis, than the other. In other words, most so-called spondees can be read as either iambs or trochees.