top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by English Authors
"To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of."
"The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them."
"An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore."
"You get so weak from eating pears that you fall down, and then they come and take you away on a stretcher."
"In England, David and I are big fish in a small pond. But in L.A., we are tiny, tiny, tiny fish in a big pond."
"At the centre of Christianity is community; we are gathered by the Lord around the altar."
"Bill Astor knew these papers were missing. Stephen showed his hand in October."
"If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."
"The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it."
"The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person."
"Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return."
"The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light."
"Don't ask me who my favourite monster was because I'm sick of saying Tom Baker."
"It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that."
"A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding."
"Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated."
"Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair."
"I found the offer of a knighthood something that I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights."
"Indeed I had not much wit, yet I was not an idiot - my wit was according to my years."
"I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't."
"When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them."
"The most important thing is to follow your instinct and get involved with some friends who have similar tastes and aspirations and like music as much as you do."
"It was rehearsing in the studio, at which point they were setting up the sound, and once we'd got the thing together they'd actually record it, without us knowing sometimes!"
"The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses."
"Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live."
"Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations."
"Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal."
"Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
"Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle."
"Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex."
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
bottom of page