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Quotes by British Authors
"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."
"To help the poor to a capacity for action and liberty is something essential for one's own health as well as theirs: there is a needful gift they have to offer which cannot be offered so long as they are confined by poverty."
"To be able to play as slow as Al Jackson is almost impossible."
"Before, I suspected I might not amount to anything, and now I now I won't, so at least it takes away the wearisome burden of delusive hope."
"I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night."
"I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa."
"There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one."
"It is a good thing to follow the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging."
"He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work."
"Three or four stones in one firing will all react differently. I try to achieve a balance between those that haven't progressed enough and those about to go too far."
"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."
"I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs."
"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!"
"I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money."
"But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed."
"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."
"Live your life, sing your song. Not full of expectations. Not for the ovations. But for the joy of it."
"Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society."
"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."
"It's really best not to tell people when you feel bad. Growing up is about keeping secrets, and pretending everything is fine."
"I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it."
"Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination."
"You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament."
"You can't comfort the afflicted with afflicting the comfortable."
"Do not delude yourself, tomorrow is not guaranteed; and even if good fortune brings you your tomorrow, there is no guarantee those you love will be a part of it. Do not squander your precious, limited time. Value what love you have in your life - nothing is more valuable. Make it known to those who matter."
"If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself."
"Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold."
"Preserve the spirit of a 'lost' age, when time moved slower."
"All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!"
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."
"I was educated at Bradfield College and Oxford, where I graduated in 1939."
"We've all listened to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, haven't we? We all know how not to play a psychiatrist."
"All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation."
"Patience, the beggar's virtue, shall find no harbor here."
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