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Quotes by English Authors
"There is an easy way to measure our inner levels of abjectness and friendliness to ourselves: we should examine how well we response to noise."
"Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy."
"To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran And much it grieved my heart to think What Man has made of Man."
"This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten."
"If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you!"
"If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule."
"Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one."
"A fly Sir may sting a stately horse and make him wince but one is but an insect and the other a horse still."
"The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last."
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."
"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up."
"Liberty is the prevention of control by others."
"The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature."
"I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era."
"I think when you've lost an election by 179, there's going to be a period of time after eighteen years in government when you can't do anything right, and people just kick you for the sake of it, will never admit they voted Conservative."
"It may...be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character."
"We'll start to forget a place once we left it."
"Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating."
"It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law."
"Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence till morning. I fall asleep more grudgingly, thrashing at the waves, either reluctant to let a good day depart or still bitching about a bad one. Different currents run through our spells of unconsciousness."
"My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical."
"Sometimes just when I say hello the right way, I'm like, Whoa, I'm so cool."
"The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music."
"We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions."
"I've done movies with a sword before. But I haven't really been given the full responsibility of something like a Ridley Scott film."
"That the powers of labour, and of the other instruments which produce wealth, may be indefinitely increased by using their products as the means of further production."
"It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude."
"I can give not what men call love;But wilt thou accept notThe worship the heart lifts aboveAnd the heavens reject not:The desire of the moth for the star,Of the night for the morrow,The devotion to something afarFrom the sphere of our sorrow?"
"I don't particularly care how many records we sell any more because we've kind of bought all the equipment we want to buy."
"You roll me out flat."
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