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Quotes by British Authors
"General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be."
"After Versace was murdered, the first person to call me was Mandela."
"Body language is a very powerful tool. We had body language before we had speech, and apparently, 80% of what you understand in a conversation is read through the body, not the words."
"The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine."
"You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."
"The most conservative man in this world is the British trade unionist when you want to change him."
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
"Many talk much, and indeed well, of what Christ has done for us: but how little is spoken of what he is to do in us! and yet all that he has done for us is in reference to what he is to do in us."
"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."
"Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship."
"I may not understand, but I am willing to admire."
"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."
"I suppose I've always carried what is regarded as a bit of unnecessary baggage in Britain. I've always carried the charge that I am an intellectual in politics."
"The junkies had themselves a field day, they didn't care for the safety of the overseas tourists, no sir. They would stop at nothing. Some tourists were left bloodied and battered on the sacred ground of the Wallace Monument, minus their video cameras and the likes. The camera's were soon sold to a fence in the Raploch for pennies, compared to the actual price it was worth, then the junkies didn't waste much time getting to Big Mags' door with the £20 that they had got from the local fence in the nearby neighbourhood."
"I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order."
"Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries."
"Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow."
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
"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."
"Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
"Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement."
"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."
"Christian teaching about sex is not a set of isolated prohibitions; it is an integral part of what the Bible has to say about living in such a way that our lives communicate the character of God."
"Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love."
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
"Firstly you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own regarding their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil."
"How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that."
"Bob Dylan has a way with words that simply blows me away. When he forgets his lyrics he just makes up new ones on the spot, that is what I called talented!"
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