British Author Quotes

Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us, ZORAC announced after a short pause. The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious.

The wise maketh every thing the means of advantage; and with the same countenance beholdeth he all the faces of fortune: he governeth the good, he conquereth the evil; he is unmov'd in all. Presume not in prosperity, neither despair thou in adversity.

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

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

Of Samuel Johnson

One of the most important lessons she'd recently learned was that looking strong and confident was sometimes all the people required of you.

Stuart Hill (author)

Red lights are like queues. They are for people who have time to waste.

The first few glasses of beer were a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself, If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness.

George Mackay Brown

Since when was the stock market an accurate barometer of anything?

Let it simply be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world.

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.

The instinct to survive will never change, neither will the human body's amazing ability to endure.

If miracles be incredible, Christianity is false. If Christ wrought no miracles, then the Gospels are untrustworthy.

Frederic William Farrar

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

The trouble was, she could not see the justice of her state. She was not old: she was a girl hidden behind a mask. Now that she had realized she was no longer young, she did not know how she should behave. She had become a stranger in her own life.

Because I longed to comprehend the infinite I drew a line between the known and unknown.

Elizabeth Bartlett

This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can't get fresh fruit in the shops.

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.

I am not disposed to form a very favorable idea of Chemistry, nor do I expect to derive much entertainment from it. I prefer the sciences which exhibit nature on a grand scale, to those that are confined to the minutiae of petty details.

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

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.

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

The Door Without a Key is the Door of Dreams; it is the door by which the sensitive escape into insanity when life is too hard for them, and artists use it as a window in a watch-tower. Psychologists call it a psychological mechanism; magicians call it magic, and the man in the street calls it illusion or charlatanry according to taste. It does not matter to me what it is called, for it is effectual.

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson

I think the hardest thing in life is when we see those we love turn down a wrong path, and when no entreaty will induce them to retrace their steps.

Rosa Nouchette Carey

I don't think there was any overall Reich policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was.