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Quotes by English Authors
"In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny."
"There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment."
"I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death."
"Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours."
"Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps."
"Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,Is the immediate jewel of their souls:Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;But he that filches from me my good nameRobs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."
"A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it."
"The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing."
"They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be."
"Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth."
"When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself."
"Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all."
"A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game."
"Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it."
"I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for."
"My mother moved abroad when I was 11, my dad wasn't around from the time that I was a baby, so I was not the product of a family, but a product of observation - of watching what went on around me, of watching who I liked, what I didn't like, what I thought was good behavior and what I thought was bad behavior and tailoring myself accordingly."
"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."
"I've never been out with any of the cast of Coronation Street. We're all very close friends so it's very much a professional attitude."
"Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws."
"It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked."
"Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance."
"The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears."
"Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that."
"Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again."
"I had a job when I was 16 at a gas fitter, which was a bit like a pipe fitter."
"Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing."
"It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness."
"One man is as good as another until he has written a book."
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