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Quotes by English Authors
"A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out."
"Nobody knows you.You don't know yourself.And I, who am half in love with you,What am I in love with?My own imaginings?"
"For the point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however sceptical we might be."
"In another place was a vast array of idols-Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly took my fancy."
"Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel."
"American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World."
"Then the small man suddenly ran after them and said:"I want to get my haircut. I say, do you know a little shop anywhere where they cut hair properly? I keep on having my hair cut, but it keeps on growing again."One of the tall men looked at him with the air of a pained naturalist."
"The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That's what the whole thing is about. And we can't stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I'm not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not."
"I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe in."
"I have a profound belief in the power of the Sacraments. I believe that in a Divine way the use of them teaches the teachable their inward meaning and therefore I think we need be in no hurry to attempt to teach new converts all that we think we know about them."
"The first real thing I heard was Three O'Clock Blues by B.B. King. That's where it all began for me."
"Human language... prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
"I wanted to make a movie about the arbitrary nature of love."
"You need to do the work to bring the money in, but not compromise standards."
"This is not a philosophy of not looking where one is going, it is a philosophy of not making where one is going so much more important than where one is that there will be no point in going."
"I'm pretty well. So's the family, and so's the boys, except for a sort of rash as is a running through the school, and rather puts 'em off their feed. But it's a ill wind as blows no good to nobody; that's what I always say when them lads has a wisitation. A wisitation, sir, is the lot of mortality. Mortality itself, sir, is a wisitation. The world is chock full of wisitations; and if a boy repines at a wisitation and makes you uncomfortable with his noise, he must have his head punched. That's going according to the Scripter, that is."
"Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."
"Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry."
"Who can tell? It may be that there must always be growth - and that if one does not grow kinder and wiser and greater, then the growth must be the other way, fostering the evil things. Or it may be that the life they all led was too shut in, too folded back upon itself - without breadth or vision. Or it may be that, like a disease of crops, it is contagious, that first one and then another is sickened."
"You are hard at work madam ," said the man near her.Yes," Answered Madam Defarge ; " I have a good deal to do."What do you make, Madam ?"Many things."For instance ---"For instance," returned Madam Defarge , composedly ,Shrouds."The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, feeling it mightily close and oppressive ."
"The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted."
"Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door."
"Is then no nook of English ground secureFrom rash assault?"
"Sometime [Queen Mab] driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,Of healths five fathom deep; and then anonDrums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or twoAnd sleeps again."
"There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable."
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