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Quotes by British Authors
"The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization."
"Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison."
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity."
"My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors."
"If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision."
"Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."
"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."
"I personally could never come to terms with my label of 'Criminally Insane'. Just because of my violent outbursts in prison, don't mean to say I'm mad. Obviously I had become a disruptive element within the penal system. Uncontrollable! Unpredictable! But that don't make insanity!"
"He sat watching what went forward with the quiet outward glance of healthy old age."
"What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?''Cats don't have names,' it said.'No?' said Coraline.'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."
"General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be."
"Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow."
"After Versace was murdered, the first person to call me was Mandela."
"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."
"Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least."
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
"But love...it's only an illusion. A story one makes up in one's mind about another person. And one knows all the time it isn't true. Of course one knows why one's always taking care not to destroy the illusion."
"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."
"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."
"For me it's more important to look at each constituency individually and find a community I feel I can serve to the best of my abilities, and where I feel I can make a real difference, and further their cause."
"Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own."
"Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping."
"Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom."
"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them."
"I just play him as myself, I don't ease myself into any role really. I stick a beard on and play me."
"A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth."
"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism."
"Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries."
"If you suffer from depression, anything that makes you feel has to the most important thing in your life, because it's the only thing that can save you."
"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."
"The 2 million people who work in the NHS and social care are also themselves patients and users. I know they all want to treat patients and users the way they and their families would want to be treated and that is the purpose of our reforms."
"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."
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