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Quotes by English Authors
"Genghis Khan was a fascinating man and way ahead of his time."
"Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title."
"Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?"
"At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it."
"That justice should be administered between men, it is necessary that testimonies of fact be alleged; and that witnesses should apprehend themselves greatly obliged to discover the truth, according to their conscience, in dark and doubtful cases."
"It is dishonest the way that people suddenly think they've found guitars, and wear their guitar as a badge."
"Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game."
"I hated the bangs in the war: I always felt a silent war would be more tolerable."
"I can feel the 60S looming. In my profession, I've just moved along with my age. By thinking in decades, rather than whether someone's 42 or 47, you can give yourself a whole 10 years to turn yourself around in."
"If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere, can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar or in the church."
"Burleigh, absolutely; and a lot about Elizabeth. I mean I found when I play Henry V a lot of connections with the hidden history of the connection between Francis Bacon and Elizabeth."
"I suppose because I have a good ear, I could pick out harmonies and learn by ear. I still think that you have to have an ear for music to really be able to feel and understand what you're playing. You can learn by watching and listening to other people."
"The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected."
"Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind."
"Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket."
"We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles."
"The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil."
"The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and this means a short roll call of names; Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche."
"It's political, sir. Apparently he wants a return to the values and traditions that made the city great, sir." "Does he _know_ what those values and traditions _were_?" said Vimes, aghast."
"One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs."
"For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt."
"A good life fears not life nor death."
"It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn."
"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation."
"Alas! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience."
"I worked with the same trainer that worked with Denzel Washington in THe Hurricane. It was three months of training, five days a week, 4 to 5 hours a day. This was followed by a month of choreography."
"There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings."
"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade."
"I have wanted to fly into space for many years, but never imagined it would really be feasible."
"It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."
"Go on - but don't think you can kill my confidence. I've had experts doing it for years."
"There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man."
"The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person."
"I've just got a new house in Pacific Palisades. It's really cute."
"The flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side."
"He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale."
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