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Quotes by English Authors
"O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start;You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart."
"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good."
"Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood."
"The way was long and weary, But gallantly they strode, A country lad and lassie, Along the heavy road."
"Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless."
"But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement."
"O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!"
"A manufacturing district... sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighbourhood."
"Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds."
"Confession is an act of violence against the unoffending."
"All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain."
"No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time."
"When you write something it has to hit the level that you accept as being good."
"The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom."
"I wanted something that had the feel of a complete band and a variety of instrument. Apart from doing the album for musical satisfaction, I felt it was an important statement for other women - showing you don't have to rely on other people to do things for you."
"People become concerned with being more humble than other people."
"In every cloud, in every tree " filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women " my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"
"Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser's passion, not the thief s."
"The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority."
"You don't win tournaments by playing well and thinking poorly."
"What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!"
"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
"Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are."
"Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that the character peaks a little later;between twenty and thirty, say. And after that we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also if this isn't too grand a word--our tragedy."
"Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms."
"As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers."
"I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life."
"He could not die when trees were green, for he loved the time too well."
"Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion."
"No man ever did, nor ever shall, truly go forth to convert the nations, nor to prophesy in the present state of witnesses against Antichrist, but by the gracious inspiration and instigation of the Holy Spirit of God."
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
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