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Quotes by English Authors
"Man's inability to get out of bed in the morning is a curious thing. One may reason with oneself clearly and forcibly without the slightest effect. One knows that delay means inconvenience. Perhaps it may spoil one's whole day. And one also knows that a single resolute heave will do the trick. But logic is of no use. One simply lies there."
"This band makes sure that we have whole sections of stuff that are free form so that they don't know what we are doing next, that is the fun part of playing. You are playing something that you haven't ever played before."
"Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue."
"Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?""Ask a glass of water!"
"The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you're gonna spot some things that kinda need to be mentioned. But often the romantic view is to say, 'If you loved me, you wouldn't criticise me.' Actually, true love is often about trying to teach someone how to be the best version of themselves."
"While pensive poets painful vigils keep,Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep."
"He was a story at least, even if he never became anything else."
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
"There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master."
"Right!"Right!"You can get there!"I can get there!"You're a natural at counting to two!"I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!"If you can count to two, you can count to anything!"If I can count to two, I can count to anything!"And then the world is your mollusc!"My mollusc! What's a mollusc?"
"Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way."
"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!'Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."
"This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs."
"It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code."
"It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison."
"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."
"But the plans were on display."On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."That's the display department."With a flashlight."Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."So had the stairs."But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"Yes, said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard."
"The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator of the Middle East. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. 'All is changed, changed utterly."
"The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature."
"Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain."
"I taught for 17 years in an inner city comprehensive schools."
"We knew we were talking about spies. I knew he knew I knew. I was digging my own grave."
"And I think you understand a little bit more why she falls for him. In a way, watching the French do anything is a little more fun because their gestures are different. And in that way, they make everything interesting."
"The course of every intellectual if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough ends in the obvious from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred."
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