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Quotes by English Authors
"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
"Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan - spoiled."
"The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick."
"The mighty question arises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is not what we think we are and ought to be."
"One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing."
"Time is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary."
"A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie."
"The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances."
"Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys."
"Wherever we halted we were surrounded by wandering troops of Bedouins."
"I used to think that the world was doing something to me, that the world owed me something. And that either the conservatives or the socialists or the fascists or the communists or the Christians or the Jews or the fascists were doing something to me. And when you're a teeny-booper, that's what you think. I'm 40 now, I don't think that anymore-because I found out it doesn't fucking work. I am part of them. There's no separation. Were all one. 'Give peace a chance,' not 'Shoot people for peace.' 'All you need is love.' I believe it. It's damn hard, but I absolutely believe it."
"It is no use describing a house; the reader will fix the scene in some spot he knows himself."
"It's like that scene from The Player when they talk about merging Star Wars and Kramer vs. Kramer, or whatever. You could do that with music and it would just be awful."
"There is more difference within the sexes than between them."
"It's the only way we can lose, irrespective of the result."
"Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure."
"People think the Beatles know what's going on. We don't. We're just doing it."
"We will that all men know we blame not all the lords, nor all those that are about the king's person, nor all gentlemen nor yeomen, nor all men of law, nor all bishops, nor all priests, but all such as may be found guilty by just and true inquiry and by the law."
"A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition."
"I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low, 'Tis that I can't remember how They go."
"O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping."
"That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident."
"There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
"He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction, a look of hatred unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul."
"For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received."
"I know what I like when I see it, but no way have I ever become interested in learning about it."
"She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position, it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship."
"I was just very conscious that I could either bore people by having the music be similar for too long, or I could just wear them out and bore them in a different way by having it changing too much every minute or two minutes. So, there was that kind of balance to get right."
"Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not."
"We have the melancholy dilemma of not being in a state to make peace or to prosecute war."
"And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on."
"The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule."
"You're entirly bonkers but I'll tell you a secret all the best people are."
"Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker."
"I grew up without a television. It meant that I read lots of books and entertained myself."
"The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality."
"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm."
"Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm."
"More of your conversation would infect my brain."
"Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead."
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