English Author Quotes

William Shakespeare

Charles Dickens

Jane Austen

Lord Byron

Lewis Carroll

Agatha Christie

Rudyard Kipling

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.

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.

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

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

There are times when Science does not satisfy.

Rudyard Kipling

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

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

G. K. Chesterton

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

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

Agatha Christie

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

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

Isaac Rosenberg

"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

Our most provident and glorious Creator so furnished countries with several commodities that amongst all there might be sociable conversation; and, one standing in need of the other, all might be combined in a common league, and exhibit mutual succors. This abundance of all countries in everything, and defect of every country in most things, maintaineth in all regions and every province a most strict combination. So that, as in the body of the little world, the head cannot say to the foot, nor the foot to the head, 'I stand in no need of thee:' so, in the body of the great world, Europe cannot say to Asia, nor Asia to Africa, 'I want not your commodities, nor am defective in that of which thou boastest of abundance.'

When on the breath of Autumn's breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down; O, then what joy to walk at will, Upon the golden harvest-hill!

When asked what he would eat if he was in a desert with no food in sight except a cow:

I'd find out what the cow was eating and join it.

Benjamin Zephaniah

The sea never resting, but perpetually winning land in one place and losing in another, doth show what may be done in length of time by a continual operation, not subject unto ceasing or intermission.

Gabriel Plattes

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

By trying to do what is right will often entail you having to disagree with others, and this is not easy. Once you start doing it more often, you will find it easier.

Nigel Cumberland

Curious wits, not be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject as most do, but [should] rove abroad, to have an oar in every mans boat, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup,

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

Books, to the reading child, are so much more than books-they are dreams and knowledge, they are a future, and a past.

A young man is stirred and stimulated by the consciousness of how much depends upon his own exertions: a young girl is oppressed by it.

Elizabeth Missing Sewell

The wife ought to have the first child and the husband the second, then there wouldn't ever be any more.

Celestial sounds have sometimes been heard on earth.

The axe is laid to the root of the tree.... I will hew it down. And as I live, I will plague your Honor, Pomp, Greatness, Superfluity, and confound it into parity, equality, community.