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.

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Isaac Rosenberg

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!

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

Agatha Christie

"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

In following their line through, and those of Plantagenet and Tudor, there is but little to soothe the mind.

Charlotte Turner Smith

To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.

Sarah Stickney Ellis

Somehow love gives even to a dull man the knowledge of his lover's heart.

But while our parting was mutually acceptable and even expedient, still it was painful. And I would like to think it hurt both of us, for I certainly felt it: a wrenching inside, like some small but improbably necessary organ was no longer in there, that it was missing, torn or fallen out. And at the time I'd thought that was the end of it; what was missing was gone forever

Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times. Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social category of things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow-ties. Not the sort of attire for a gentleman.

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything and everything is nought.

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

For true happiness, sane enjoyment, you must look to the country, not town. Only you want one true heart beside you with which to enjoy it!

Ellen Buckingham Mathews

Salad, I can't bear salad. It grows while you're eating it, you know.

Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.

Dorothy L. Sayers

A journalist who has to borrow a typewriter is bad news.

Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged - that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful...

If there is one beast in all the loathsome fauna of civilization I hate and despise it is a man of the world.

Henry Arthur Jones