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Quotes by English Authors
"If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory."
"Death, mademoiselle, unfortunately creates a prejudice. A prejudice in favour of the deceased. I heard what you said just now to my friend Hastings. 'A nice bright girl with no men friends.' You said that in mockery of the newspapers. And it is very true-when a young girl is dead, that is the kind of thing that is said. She was bright. She was happy. She was sweet-tempered. She had not a care in the world. She had no undesirable acquaintances. There is a great charity always to the dead. Do you know what I should like this minute? I should like to find someone who knew Elizabeth Barnard and who does not know she is dead! Then, perhaps, I should hear what is useful to me-the truth."
"What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me."
"In all my years of performing, no audience member has ever actually assaulted me. I consider this to be the singular triumph of my performing career."
"I don't read anything anymore. I don't have the eyesight. I read my own copy, that's all. I think I've read everything that's worth reading."
"We have a saying up here. 'Life is wasted on the living."
"The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees."
"My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind."
"I find it strange the way human nature wants heroes and yet wants to destroy their heroes. It's a kind of mass insecurity people want something to look up to and get a buzz off but, at the same time, want to destroy it because it makes them feel insecure."
"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls,But whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it."
"There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love."
"The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, is the cause of Man's error and misery."
"None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so."
"Now fair and marvellous was that vessel made, and it was filled with a wavering flame, pure and bright; and Earendil the Mariner sat at the helm, glistening with dust of elven-gems, and the Silmaril was bound upon his brow. Far he journeyed in that ship, even into the starless voids; but most often was he seen at morning or at evening, glimmering in sunrise or sunset, as he came back to Valinor from voyages beyond the confines of the world."
"Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful."
"Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle."
"As long as a house is like yours, and as long as you work together with your brothers, not a house in the world will be able to compete with you, to cause you harm or to take advantage of you, for together you can undertake and perform more than any house in the world."
"To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs."
"A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it."
"The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction."
"If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips."
"On the one hand, I've had such a normal upbringing with my mum, who has kept me grounded, but on the other, the wild experiences through my dad."
"There is no intrinsic worth in money but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for twenty pounds or for a shilling, it is the labor of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold or silver, which all the comforts of life must arise from."
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
"Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see."
"Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing."
"This thing all things devours:Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;Gnaws iron, bites steel;Grinds hard stones to meal;Slays king, ruins town,And beats high mountain down."
"It's almost like, it's often the bad recording quality of things which makes them interesting."
"The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood."
"Facts are not truths they are not conclusions they are not even premisses but in the nature and parts of premisses."
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