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Quotes by English Authors
"Remember!--It is Christianity to do good always--even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace."
"Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned."
"We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity."
"It's rude to stare," said the troll. Its mouth opened with a little crest of foam, and shut again in exactly the same way that water closes over a stone. "Is it? Why?" asked Rincewind. How does he hold himself together, his mind screamed at him. Why doesn't he spill?"
"I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'."
"How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave."
"He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other."
"I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness."
"Look at it like this, it's not that we're making life, we're simply giving life a place to live."
"Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations."
"This kid's excited because he's with Bad Company and I'm excited because I'm with Chuck Berrys' son."
"The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil."
"Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment."
"Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies."
"Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven."
"I have played a boxer, a cowboy, a knight, a prince, an elf and a pirate. I am so glad to have done all of that already."
"Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue."
"Pride the first peer and president of hell."
"Desire of having is the sin of covetousness."
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."
"This story shall the good man teach his son;And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,From this day to the ending of the world,But we in it shall be remembered-We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition;And gentlemen in England now-a-bedShall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
"If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic."
"Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies."
"Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong."
"The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility."
"It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy."
"Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it."
"You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions."
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