British Novelist Quotes

J. K. Rowling

C. S. Lewis

William Makepeace Thackeray

Anne Brontë

Evelyn Waugh

Daphne du Maurier

John le Carré

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

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.

It is universally allowed that, though nothing can be more interesting in itself than the conversation of two lovers, yet nothing can be more insipid in detail - just as the heavenly fragrance of the rose becomes vapid and sickly under all the attempts made to retain and embody its exquisite odor.

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

The only really satisfactory confidante for your troubles is someone who enjoys them, and this inevitably cuts out anyone who actually loves you.

One doesn't love any of the things of Summer as much as one does the things of Spring.

Anne Douglas Sedgwick

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

I can't believe in the God of my Fathers. If there is one Mind which understands all things, it will comprehend me in my unbelief. I don't know whose hand hung Hesperus in the sky, and fixed the Dog Star, and scattered the shining dust of Heaven, and fired the sun, and froze the darkness between the lonely worlds that spin in space.

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.

I mucked about with his hair. His shoes
were where he left them. His shoes are where he
left them.

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

Dealing with a counter clerk at the phone company who had all the customer service skills of a homicidal sociopath on work release.

Jasmine Cresswell

Nobody minded what you did in bed or what you said about God, a very civilized attitude in 1948.

What is freedom, in the end, but that no one cares any longer to try to restrain us?

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

Bernard Cornwell

This skin, this hair, all this outside stuff. It isn't me. It's just my package. It's like the wrapper around the sweet; it isn't the sweet itself. What we really are is all inside the package. All our feelings. All our good moods and bad moods. All our ideas, our cleverness, our love, that's what a person really is. It's called a spirit.

Colin Cotterill

I assure you my professions never go beyond my intentions...

Elizabeth Inchbald

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

Mary Augusta Ward

Is it for you to forgive me? Is it for me to forgive you? Is it for God to forgive us all, and for what? Where there's no judging on one side or the other, there's no forgiveness wanted.

E. Arnot Robertson

To offer a man friendship when love is in his heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst.

Frank Frankfort Moore

There's an argument for saying that brave men deserve what they get, but it's a serious business forcing cowards to stand in harm's way.

The dust comes secretly day after day,
Lies on my ledge and dulls my shining things.
But O this dust that I shall drive away
Is flowers and Kings,
Is Solomon's temple, poets, Nineveh.

Farewell to Thee! But not farewell To all my fondest thoughts of Thee; Within my heart they still shall dwell And they shall cheer and comfort me.

The Daily Worker has been renamed The Morning Star. I find nothing starry about it. A more informative new title would have been the Daily Striker.

Rayner Heppenstall

If sexual experiences were theoretically minimal, social expectations were on the contrary great. Once there was a Drag Hunt Ball just outside Oxford, to which I had unaccountably failed to be asked. I asked God to so something about it, and God recklessly killed poor King George VI, as a result of which the Hunt Ball was cancelled.

The Jewish religion has it completely right in maintaining you should think very carefully about what you eat.