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Quotes by English Authors
"Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd."
"As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things."
"I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this."
"At the end of my trial, I was rather hoping the judge would send me to Australia for the rest of my life."
"The scientific perspective of the world, especially the living world, inexorably impresses on us a dynamic picture of the world of entities and structures involved in continuous and incessant change and in process without ceasing."
"Next to a lost battle, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won."
"I fear I am beyond your comprehension."
"She went indoors in that peculiar state of misery which is not exactly grief, and which especially attends the dawnings of reason in the latter days of an ill-judged, transient love. To be conscious that the end of the dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end."
"Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies."
"I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise."
"Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance."
"The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication."
"The Church in England is the Church of England."
"Yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits."
"If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid."
"For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics."
"I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them."
"Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security."
"It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public."
"Volume II: Chapter V What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are forced to believe this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us, had the same powers as I-I also am subject to the same laws. In the face of all this we call ourselves lords of the creation, wielders of the elements, masters of life and death, and we allege in excuse of this arrogance, that though the individual is destroyed, man continues for ever."
"Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them."
"We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends."
"We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it."
"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite."
"You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin - to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours, closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the ring. We are horribly afraid, but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds."
"I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love."
"I had a dream that I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep."
"To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them."
"I wish creatures wouldn't be so easily offended!", "You'll get used to it in time," said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again."
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