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Quotes by British Authors
"He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."
"Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering."
"If mathematics is to be understood widely, we need to emphasise its elegance and its applications. Sometimes it seems that universities want to emphasise how difficult it is!"
"The secret to success is constancy of purpose."
"You may possibly become rich by just caring about yourself and what you want to gain from your profession and your life but you cannot possibly enrich the lives of everyone you meet that way."
"Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race - of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance - of substituting peace for war - freedom for bondage - religion for superstition - the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for."
"Great countries are those that produce great people."
"Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness."
"I am very much aware that if I am getting good press at the moment I could just as easily be getting bad press. I cannot have the good and forget the bad. You have to accept it both ways."
"My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it."
"I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it."
"I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable."
"Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold."
"I'm supposed to be the director of a television company, but I've only ever seen that company as a vehicle for making the kind of programmes we wanted to make, getting our ideas on the screen."
"Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made."
"When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel."
"Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote."
"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.You must remember this."
"A newspaper should be the maximum of information, and the minimum of comment."
"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."
"When you use positive words it naturally has a very dynamic effect on the energy present around you."
"The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity."
"There's a difference between criminals and crooks. Crooks steal. Criminals blow some guy's brains out. I'm a crook."
"Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself."
"Usually I can hear the pianos, the saxophone, and usually I can hear Ronnie. But I really need to listen to Keith and Mick. The rest of the band is sort of an embellishment to that."
"The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive."
"It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit divorced from it they remain barren."
"But, gentlemen, can any of us say that as a result of such overwhelming sacrifices of money, of men, of ideals, and of civil dignity the sense of security has indeed been attained?"
"We had every kind of audience you could name. Young, old, not-so-old, some older than old, some younger than young: they were there, they were there! There was everything."
"Wonderful invention, the phonograph. Keeps a man alive long after he's dead."
"I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory."
"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
"With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything."
"People need to be peppered or even outraged occasionally. Our national comedy and drama is packed with earthy familiarity and honest vulgarity. Clean vulgarity can be very shocking and that, in my view, gives greater involvement."
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