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Quotes by English Authors
"1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
"If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius."
"I want to give producers more financial security."
"Given a fair wind, we will negotiate our way into the Common Market, head held high, not crawling in. Negotiations? Yes. Unconditional acceptance of whatever terms are offered us? No."
"I have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort rather than sorrow, for Heaven is just, and such things teach us impressively that there is a far brighter world than this, and that the passage to it is speedy."
"We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.God help us, for we knew the worst too young!from "Gentleman Rankers."
"I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be."
"I paid for my own education by scholarship until I left university."
"Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most?That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost?That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain?That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?"
"It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery."
"Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste than Herman Melville."
"Faith is above all openness an act of trust in the unknown."
"I'm sorry if the following sounds combative and excessively personal, but that's my general style."
"The general trend in the last 4,000 years is that carbon dioxide and temperature have been moving against each other."
"Even when I was Archbishop of Wales and working with new bishops, I used to say, not realising quite how true it was, 'One of the things you will do as a bishop is disappoint people'."
"I think that it [the Church] stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonisms in existence. Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. It presents many faces towards the world, but everywhere it is systematic in its fight against freedom."
"When you're in a band that's so big when you're young, you kind of lose your identity a little bit. You just become part of the band. I just needed to get away from it."
"I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance."
"Our torments also may in length of timeBecome our Elements."
"Well, the first thing to say is that we've worked hard to maintain compatibility, so that any program written with an earlier version of Mathematica can run without change in 3.0, and any notebook can be converted."
"Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body."
"Yeah, well that's the best thing about it, I think, is knowing kids and kids getting mental when they know you're in it. Any kid you meet and anyone I know tells the kid you're in it and they get short of breath."
"And I did wonder - because it's now three years ago since I left prison - whether there would come a time when I would forget it, or it would be in the past as anything else might be - no, it's there every day of my life."
"I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me."
"But, as we have before been led to remark, most of Mr. Darwin's statements elude, by their vagueness and incompleteness, the test of Natural History facts."
"And in doing this I advise you to send to the best manors of your lands those of your household in whom you place most confidence to be present in August at the leading of the corn, and to guard it as aforesaid."
"The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them."
"I'm so happy to have been a part of that process and I would go straight back into the desert in a ton of chain mail for Ridley any day of the week. He's an amazing director and I can't wait to see the long version."
"Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself."
"I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't."
"The goal of all learning is to repair the ruin of our first parents."
"We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."
"The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done."
"So I have a friend who works for me once a week. She's got e-mail, so anybody that must send an e-mail, they send it to her and she faxes it to me. Sounds like a long way of doing things, but it works for me."
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