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Quotes by English Authors
"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."
"{We} have not to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule, rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can't."
"Living in Cambridge, with nature and everything, it's so clean."
"It is the nature of the strong heart, that like the palm tree it strives ever upwards when it is most burdened."
"I don't have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes-and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to explain that some people don't think jokes even belong in proper books. I won't bother breaking the news that, if they remain readers, they will insist on depressing themselves for about a decade of their lives, in a concerted search of gravitas through literature."
"Gather experience... Look at what you should not look at. A feeling of anxiety is the sure and certain evidence that you should do this."
"The country up here is beautiful; everything green and pleasant; and if you saw it now, you would not believe that in two months' time it could have such a parched and barren appearance as it will then assume."
"A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind."
"Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth."
"When I lost my decathlon world record I took it like a man. I only cried for ten hours."
"Clear, unscalable, aheadRise the Mountains of Instead,From whose cold, cascading streamsNone may drink except in dreams."
"And when you're on your own there is that terrifying possibility that you may be the only person on the planet who thinks it's funny - and you have no way of finding out."
"Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is good company along the way."
"Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions."
"I'm obviously very keen on the theater and I think it's inevitable that some of the orchestral and chamber pieces have got dramatic elements which might even suggest an unspecified dramatic plot of some kind or other, even though it's not in my mind at the time."
"In England, the profession of the law is that which seems to hold out the strongest attraction to talent, from the circumstance, that in it ability, coupled with exertion, even though unaided by patronage, cannot fail of obtaining reward."
"The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat."
"Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying."
"I am the fool, and must be the sufferer, if it be not of God."
"The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was currently a particular engaging sight, nor had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul.It had indeed been an error.It had been late one night-- of course.It had been a difficult day-- of course.There had been soulful music playing on the ship's sound system-- of course.And he had, of course, been slightly drunk.In other words, all the usual conditions that bring on a bout of soul searching had applied, but it had, nevertheless, clearly been an error."
"Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect."
"Mankind are divided into sects, and individuals think very differently on religious subjects, from the purest motives; and that gracious common Parent, who loves all his children alike, beholds with approbation every one who worships him in sincerity."
"If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."
"So long as large armies go to battle, so long will the air arm remain their spearhead."
"Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place."
"My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative."
"Being in the Spice Girls was an insane experience."
"God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers."
"I went to the premiere of The Detective with Sinatra, and perhaps people jumped to conclusions. He was very protective towards me and never came on to me sexually."
"Command that your marshal be careful to be present over the household, and especially in the hall, to keep the household, within doors and without, respectable, without dispute or noise, or bad words."
"We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization."
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