English Author Quotes

My Lord Tomnoddy is thirty-four;
The Earl can last but a few years more.
My Lord in the Peers will take his place:
Her Majesty's councils his words will grace.
Office he'll hold and patronage sway;
Fortunes and lives he will vote away;
And what are his qualifications?—ONE!
He's the Earl of Fitzdotterel's eldest son.

Robert Barnabas Brough

And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.

Algernon Blackwood

The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is... remarkable... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

Frances Trollope

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.

Richard Aldington

Curious wits, not be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject as most do, but [should] rove abroad, to have an oar in every mans boat, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup,

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

In a herber green, asleep where I lay,
The birds sang sweet in the mids of the day;
I dreamed fast of mirth and play.
In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

William Shenstone

For chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel the ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple.

H. Russell Wakefield

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

We must go for a day in the country and when surrounded by the gay twittering of the birds and the smell of the cows I will lay my suit at her feet and he waved his arm wildly at the gay thought.

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

I can pass days
Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees,
Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,--
The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs,
Each tree a natural harp,--each different leaf
A different note, blent in one vast thanksgiving.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots
About their heads are flying!

William Pitt (ship-builder)

The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just believe enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it.

Catherine Crowe

I'm hither come, but what d'ye think to say?
A woman's pen presents you with a play:
Who smiling told me I'd be sure to see
That once confirmed, the house would empty be.

Frances Boothby

I've learned over the years that everything is more or less the same amount of work, so you may as well set your sights high and try and do something really cool.

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.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more:
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store:
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I have; they pine, I live.

Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face; the predominant passion and the strongest feature become more conspicuous from the others retiring.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

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.

Threadbare his songs seem now, to lettered ken: They were worn threadbare next the hearts of men.

It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.

Abigail Tarttelin

First, a poem must be magical, then musical as a sea-gull and it must hold fire as well.

Jose Garcia Villa

You are not in charge of the universe; you are in charge of yourself.