English Author Quotes

William Shakespeare

Charles Dickens

Jane Austen

Lord Byron

Lewis Carroll

Agatha Christie

Rudyard Kipling

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

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

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

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

G. K. Chesterton

There are times when Science does not satisfy.

Rudyard Kipling

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

Agatha Christie

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

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

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.

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 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

Epitaph:

Went the day well? we died and never knew;
But well or ill, England, we died for you.

John Maxwell Edmonds

Al the povere peple tho pescoddes fetten; Benes and baken apples thei broghte in hir lappe, Chibolles and chervelles and ripe chiries manye, And profrede Piers this present to plese with Hunger.

William Langland

Science is concerned with finding out and stating the facts: poetry's task is to give you the look, the smell, the taste, the "feel" of those facts.

Cecil Day Lewis

E'er time and place were, time and place were not, When Primitive Nothing something straight begot, Then all proceeded from the great united — What.

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter.

Though like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams

Thou that swing'st upon the waving haire Of some well-filled Oaten Beard, Drunke ev'ry night with a Delicious teare, Dropt thee from Heav'n, where now th'art! The joys of Earth and Ayre are thine intire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and flye; And when thy Poppy workes, thou dost retire To thy carv'd Acorn-bed to lye.

Richard Lovelace

Like an ambassador that beds a queen
With the nice caution of a sword between.

Look in, and see Christ's chosen saint In triumph wear his Christ-like chain; No fear lest he should swerve or faint; "His life is Christ, his death is gain.

And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze
About a star of deathless and painless peace
But no astronomer can find where it is.

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

'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ,—
The frontier-grave is far away—
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.'

Everything that I write is a kind of battle won—or lost—against silence and incoherence.