English Author Quotes

A little of what you like does you good. But you can have too much of a good thing.

Dick King-Smith

As with gladness men of old
Did the guiding star behold.

William Chatterton Dix

Tell them, my soul, the fears that make me quake:
The smouldering brimstone and the burning lake,
Life feeding death, death ever life devouring,
Torments not moved, unheard, yet still roaring,
God lost, hell found,—ever, never begun.
Now bid me into flame from smoke to run!

William Alabaster

Immense as Whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble the Ocean till it boyl...

William Davenant

The sea makes no promises and breaks none.

Lillian Beckwith

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

Love lives with Nature, not with lust. Go find her in the flowers.

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

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that he on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those
Whom he to follow him hath chose.

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.

J. B. Priestley

Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore: So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish, less than in a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear.

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

Robert Southwell

Recently a young journalist came to interview me about what I was doing the day war broke out. During the course of the interview I recounted the deaths of my only brother, my husband's only brother, a brother in law and my four best friends. "So," she said, did the war affect you in any way?

Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

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

Rachel Russell, Lady Russell

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.

O, Winter! Put away thy snowy pride;
O, Spring! Neglect the cowslip and the bell;
O, Summer! Throw thy pears and plums aside;
O, Autumn! Bid the grape with poison swell.

Thomas Chatterton

For though the day be never so long,
At last the bells ringeth to evensong.

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.

Mobile phones... they're not for communicating, they're for broadcasting. Broadcasting The Show Of Me.

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

Most of life's problems can be solved
By running fast and kicking something.

U. A. Fanthorpe

Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement.

The first slap-jack given me for dinner was a cake of flour, partially fried in a pan of fat bacon. I nibbled about the brown edges and threw it, unbaked, against a barn door, where it stuck for days.

A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel books;
I trow that countenance cannot lie,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.