English Author Quotes

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

Philippa Gregory

The highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakespeare and Socrates were the most festive companions.

Thomas Love Peacock

'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ,—
The frontier-grave is far away—
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.'

I, a Laconian dog, can bite again: Yes, I can make the Daunian tiger flee, Much more a bragging, foul-mouth'd whelp like thee.

Henry Kirke White

A woman friend! He that believes that weakness, Steers in a stormy night without a compass.

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

U. A. Fanthorpe

Into a slumber then I fell,
When fond imagination
Seemed to see, but could not tell
Her feature or her fashion.

Look at everything upside down.Take absolutely nothing for granted.

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

I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.

Diane Setterfield

And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done.

Joshua Sylvester

True modesty is a discerning grace
And only blushes in the proper place;
But counterfeit is blind, and skulks through fear,
Where 'tis a shame to be asham'd t' appear:
Humility the parent of the first,
The last by vanity produc'd and nurs'd.

Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners.

There's Conservatives an' they want to make things better by keepin' 'em jus' like what they are now. An' there's Lib'rals an' they want to make things better by alterin' them jus' a bit, but not so's anyone'd notice, an' there's communists an' they want to make things better by killin' everyone but themselves.

Richmal Crompton

In heaven above, And earth below, they best can serve true gladness Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

William Wordsworth

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.

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

Since each child reads only about six hundred books in the course of childhood, each book should nourish them in some way — with new ideas, insight, humor, or vocabulary.

The doctor lives by chicken pox, by measles, and by mumps. He keeps a microbe in a box and cheers him when he jumps.

There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found?

A powerful portfolio of physiological and behavioural evidence now exists to support the case that fish feel pain and that this feeling matters. In the face of such evidence, any argument to the contrary based on the claim that fish 'do not have the right sort of brain' can no longer be called scientific. It is just obstinate.

On the qualities of a work of art:

To be alive. To have a real life of its own. The miracle is that it should live in the person who reads it. And if it is real and true, it does, for five hundred years, for generation after generation.

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

Christopher Anstey

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

Dick King-Smith

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.