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Quotes by British Authors
"Gentlemen have talked a great deal of patriotism. A venerable word, when duly practised."
"And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked."
"All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation."
"The Allegator is the same, as the Crocodile, and differs only in Name."
"Air warfare is a shot through the brain, not a hacking to pieces of the enemy's body."
"I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life."
"The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp."
"Not every programme dealing with issues of global significance has to be fronted by last week's winner of Have I Got News For You-but I suppose you might be wrong."
"Freedom. And Justice. If you have those two, it covers everything. You must stick to those principles and have the courage of your convictions."
"I have to be stretched in some way. There's not enough things that come my way that I fancy."
"I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse."
"If the script is telling the story well, that is your inspiration, and you do not need to go somewhere else."
"He who is completely sanctified, or cleansed from all sin, and dies in this state, is fit for glory."
"I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone."
"I am so far as I am aware not at all influenced by dramatists, expect for Shakespeare, who I have to say, it is impossible not to be influenced by if you hold language to be the major element of theatre."
"Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man."
"I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."
"You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd."
"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."
"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization."
"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."
"You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.'"
"I consider myself one of a very small handful of drivers in the world that are top drivers. The best one? I don't think anybody can say they're the best one because, from one week to the next, you can be on form or off form a little bit."
"It is almost the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain."
"If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself."
"Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?"
"Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you."
"They were keen for me still to play the piano, which I was going to, but 45 minutes of piano would be extremely boring. I like a bit of light and shade."
"But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?""Yes, I am fond of history.""I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome."
"The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics."
"But I have the satisfaction, at the same time, to reflect that the impression to be made depends upon the consistency of the charge and the motives of the prosecutors."
"Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship."
"I was made to learn Latin and Greek, but I resented it, being of opinion that it was silly to learn a language that was no longer spoken. I believe that all the little good I got from years of classical studies I could have got in adult life in a month."
"Life is an adventure I am enjoying creating."
"Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left."
"One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated."
"If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself."
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