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Quotes by British Authors

"The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder."

"Sometimes I've looked at a plate of food and wondered if it wouldn't look better as a hat."

"The thing about science is that it's an accurate picture of the world."

"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it."

"Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking, too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?"

"Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven."

"I fancied I had some constancy of mind because I could bear my own sufferings, but found through the sufferings of others I could be weakened like a child."

"Excessive literary production is a social offense."

"We opened a design center in the South of England last year as part of our strategy for being close to our customers and developing innovative products for exciting new markets."

"The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it."

"Gratitude is the vitamin of the soul."

"It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed--the two bridemaids were duly inferior--her father gave her away--her mother stood with salts in her hand expecting to be agitated--her aunt tried to cry-- and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant."

"An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived."

"We've restored life where life was extinct. It's no longer sufficient to bring the dead back to life. We must create from the beginning, we must build up our own creature, build it up from nothing."

"They handled it very badly. It was disappointing and very humiliating. John York was very rude. He never consulted with me over what he said to the press."

"If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask isn't it? I think I don't really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that."

"That is ever the way. 'Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse."

"Now I can do no more. We must trust to the Great Disposer of all events and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty."

"In the space of a decade, China and India have emerged as dramatic, dynamic competitors."

"Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process."

"We have now seen that there is no particle of evidence for the Egyptian origin of Tarot cards."

"One of the attractive things about being in Scotland is that we have a very good pipeline of new people coming into the company from the excellent universities around us."

"I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames."


"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."

"Next year I'm going to be a guesting soloist with orchestras all over Europe, to start off with."

"Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance."

"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."


"You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height."


"This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason."

"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again."

"That's rather a broad idea," I remarked. "One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature," he answered."

"The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature."


"Adventure Bay is a convenient and safe place for any number of ships to take in wood and water during the summer months: but in the winter, when the southerly winds are strong, the surf, on all parts of the shore, makes the landing exceedingly troublesome."

"One suffers in silence so long as one has the strength and when that strength fails one speaks without measuring one's words much."
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