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Quotes by British Authors
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command."
"The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual."
"You are the universe - that's why it shines!"
"Water - a thoroughly underrated drink."
"Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power."
"What it means is that some of Charles' press secretaries have been better than others as some of the Queen's press secretaries have been better than others."
"When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion."
"This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions."
"The English light is so very subtle, so very soft and misty, that the architecture responded with great delicacy of detail."
"Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped. Nothing exists except in an endless present in which the Party is always right."
"Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful."
"The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world."
"I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'"
"The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved."
"Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species."
"The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places."
"I have to be stretched in some way. There's not enough things that come my way that I fancy."
"Movements born in hatred very quickly take on the characteristics of the thing they oppose."
"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies."
"You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd."
"I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp."
"Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind."
"I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty."
"My children are not royal; they just happen to have the Queen for their aunt."
"They handled it very badly. It was disappointing and very humiliating. John York was very rude. He never consulted with me over what he said to the press."
"Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts."
"Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation."
"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."
"Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet."
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