English Author Quotes

William Shakespeare

Charles Dickens

Jane Austen

Lord Byron

Lewis Carroll

Agatha Christie

Rudyard Kipling

"A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight."

Charles Dickens

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

There are times when Science does not satisfy.

Rudyard Kipling

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly know what they are!

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

Sunsets and death; death and therefore kisses, kisses and consequently birth and then death for yet another generation of sunset watchers.

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way

Isaac Rosenberg

Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

G. K. Chesterton

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.

Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.

Only when we have a respect for time will we have learned something of the art of living.

Jacqueline Winspear

Then he looked by him, and was ware of a damsel that came riding as fast as her horse might gallop upon a fair palfrey. And when she espied that Sir Lanceor was slain, then she made sorrow out of measure, and said, O Balin ! two bodies hast thou slain and one heart, and two hearts in one body, and two souls thou hast lost.

And it came to Marcus suddenly that slaves very seldom whistled. They might sing, if they felt like it or if the rhythm helped their work, but whistling was in some way different; it took a free man to make the sort of noise Esca was making.

Rosemary Sutcliff

A year or two to come seems long, but twenty past as nothing.

Rachel Russell, Lady Russell

There is a word in Old English which belongs wholly to that civilization - "dustsceawung," meaning contemplation of dust. It is a true image of the Anglo-Saxon mind, or at least an echo of that consciousness which considered transcience and loss to be part of the human estate; it was a world in which life was uncertain and the principal diety was fate or destiny or "wyrd."

So when we view a castle-wall Rent by a ponderous cannon ball, We must conclude from your new rules (Our reas'ning fathers being fools), That 'tis not solid brick or stone Which solid iron has o'erthrown; But that a Nothing did attract, And had not strength to counteract, By its repulsive force the thing, (The Thing your pardon Sir, the Nothing).

Alexander Bicknell

What philosopher of the schoolroom, with the mental dowry of four summers, ever questions the power of the wand that opened the dark eyes of the beautiful princess, or subtracts a single inch from the stride of seven leagues?

Robert Aris Willmott

He's as great a master of ill language as ever was bred at a Bear-Garden.

What a strange power the perception of beauty is! It seems to ebb and flow like some secret tide, independent alike of health and disease, of joy or sorrow. There are times in our lives when we seem to go singing on our way, and when the beauty of the world sets itself like a quiet harmony to the song we uplift.

He that upon a true principle lives, without any disquiet of thought, may be said to be happy.

Roger L'Estrange

[John Aubrey, 1667] He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased.

It is frequently of much importance, not to the comfort only, but to the recovery of the patient, that he should be enabled to look upon his Physician as his friend.

Thomas Gisborne