English Author Quotes

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

Is it not easy to conceive the World in your Mind? To think the Heavens fair? The Sun Glorious? The Earth fruitful? The Air Pleasant? The Sea Profitable? And the Giver bountiful? Yet these are the things which it is difficult to retain. For could we always be sensible of their use and value, we should be always delighted with their wealth and glory.

Thomas Traherne

A quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd: they are still but in their way, both helpers of nature.

William Wycherley

We thinke no greater blisse then such
To be as be we would,
When blessed none but such as be
The same as be they should.

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.

A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.

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.

He 'midst the graceful of superior grace,
And she the loveliest of the loveliest race.

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.

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

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

Only fools wait when their enemies are coming, to see if they may prove to be friends.

Philippa Gregory

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

Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.

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.

O how beautiful is morning!
How the sunbeams strike the daisies
And the kingcups fill the meadow
Like a golden-shielded army
Marching to the uplands fair.

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.

Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

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.

A moment is a mighty thing
Beyond the soul's imagination;
For in it, though we trace it not,
How much there crowds of varied lot
How much of life, life cannot see,
Darts onward to eternity!

Robert Montgomery

That just ain't cricket, is it dear?
Or they may say, and it will be true,
Britain does not rule the waves
She simply waives the bloody rules!

Stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.

Mary Norton (author)

It seems to us that the readers who want fiction to be like life are considerably outnumbered by those who would like life to be like fiction.

If ever I ate a good supper at night,
I dreamed of the devil, and waked in a fright.

Christopher Anstey

To be a clergyman, and all that is compassionate and virtuous, ought to be the same thing.

Samuel Richardson