English Author Quotes

If you get into the habit of being quick it is just as easy as being slow.

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

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.

A woman's got as much right -and more cause - to get drunk than any man

Shelagh Delaney

Do something today that reflects who you are, what you are capable of, what you care about. Give yourself plenty of evidence of what you can do, and you will not doubt your abilities to do anything.

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

To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs.

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.

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

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.

Maybe home isn't a place. Maybe it's a feeling you have inside of you, being around the people who matter to you

It is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say 'what are you at?' - before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we all have airs and graces, demands and assertions of a full grown river.

R. D. Blackmore

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.

Dorothy Frances Gurney

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

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

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

The world is full of people slandering their birthplaces, as if they really believe that small-town life is different elsewhere.

Hark, how chimes the passing bell! There's no music to a knell; All the other sounds we hear, Flatter, and but cheat our ear. This doth put us still in mind That our flesh must be resigned, And, a general silence made, The world be muffled in a shade.

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.