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Quotes by English Authors
"To live in modernity--an era contemporaneous with the triumph of the news--is to be constantly reminded that, thanks to science and technology, change and improvement are continuous and relentless. This is part of the reason we must keep checking the news in the first place: we might at any moment be informed of some extraordinary development that will fundamentally alter reality. Time is an arrow following a precarious, rapid and yet tantalizingly upward trajectory."
"Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way."
"I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen."
"How small a part of time they share, That are so wondrous sweet and fair!"
"Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule."
"Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only."
"I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything."
"Mon cher docteur! Do you not think I know the female mentality? The village gossip, it is based always, always on the relations of the sexes. If a man poisons his wife in order to travel to the North Pole or to enjoy the peace of a bachelor existence-it would not interest his fellow-villagers for a minute!"
"I'm waiting for the time when I fail - because we all fail - and I'm ready, I'll take up carpentry."
"Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more."
"Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve."
"If we perform the romantic repertoire we need more musicians."
"For I am born to tame you, Kate,And bring you from a wild Kate to a KateComfortable as other household Kates."
"I've sometimes thought of marrying - and then I've thought again."
"Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command."
"I think people nowadays do tend to blame their parents for everything."
"The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone."
"I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes."
"I usually hang around the room listening to a bit of last night's show. If there's one available, I go to the steam room every day for my voice. I spend half an hour there and then I eat, because I can't eat later than four o'clock. Then I go for a soundcheck. That's my day."
"The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality."
"People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top."
"War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known."
"The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79."
"But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things."
"And that's what I don't like about magic, Captain. 'cos it's *magic*. You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!"
"Memory is identity. I have believed this since " oh, since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death."
"Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves."
"I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
"There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water."
"Wherever a choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and supererogatory - reason."
"We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film."
"Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales."
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