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Quotes by British Authors
"Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave."
"I suppose that I did for myself what psychoanalysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest."
"You wouldn't believe how the town was named for me. I was met by the whole population, headed by the mayor."
"Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process."
"The individual source of the statistics may easily be the weakest link."
"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities - because it is the quality which guarantees all others."
"This type of mass influx is simply too much to handle. What we've had since the disaster of the 1965 Immigration Act will take 100 years or more to absorb."
"Well it has been very exciting and very changing as well. Celebrating the 40th year and having the album out and the Channel 4 documentary and I resigned from Blind Date."
"Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation."
"I'm absolutely obsessed with The Jesus And Mary Chain and Patti Smith, but I'm a massive pop fan. I love pop culture, It's a total reflection of the zeitgeist."
"If men had to have babies, they would only ever have one each."
"The true test of one's mettle is how many times you will try before you give up."
"I believe very strongly, and have fought since many years ago - at least over 30 years ago - to get architecture not just within schools, but architecture talked about under history, geography, science, technology, art."
"Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example."
"The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments."
"We enjoy sailing small boats, two of which I have designed and built myself."
"The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof."
"Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat."
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
"Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel. Almost everything else was subjugated to this ruling passion, reading stories. As a consequence, I can barely add a column of double digits, I have not the slightest idea of how a plane flies, I can't draw any better than a five-year-old."
"In the Scottish Orkneys, the little stone houses with their single large room and central hearth had an extraordinary range of built-in furniture."
"Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it."
"Perfect understanding of the infinite requires limitless intellectual capacity, our undivided attention is better suited for humbler aspirations."
"It was never physically dangerous except when I nearly fell off a horse, but it was physically arduous - especially when you were working late at night."
"The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment."
"Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."
"The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before."
"Don't waste your whole lifetime waiting for the perfect life when there's a perfectly good one within and right in front of you."
"One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly."
"Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate."
"It is the gods who have been accused. They have answered her. If they in turn accuse her, a greater judge and a more excellent court must try the case."
"No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married."
"As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away."
"Well,' said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once more to London, 'it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?''Experience,' said Holmes, laughing. 'Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence."
"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in."
"O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude..."
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