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Quotes by English Authors
"Is dishwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun."
"Chicago - a facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade every type of dubiousness."
"If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves."
"Some thirty inches from my noseThe frontier of my Person goes,And all the untilled air betweenIs private pagus or demesne.Stranger, unless with bedroom eyesI beckon you to fraternize,Beware of rudely crossing it:I have no gun, but I can spit."
"Your manuscript is both good and original but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good."
"Now I understand why you grow so many flowers."She shifted her head, not understanding.I said, "To cover the stink of sulphur."
"To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!I dare damnation."
"She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters - the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go."
"Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes."
"What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole its body brevity and wit its soul."
"Make use of every friend- and every foe."
"Evolution is baseless and quite incredible."
"I only want one thing of men, and that is, that they should leave me alone."
"This is a world of action and not for moping and droning in."
"I am not good at deception,' said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.Right, my boy, right,' said the President with a ponderous heartiness, 'You aren't good at anything."
"Y'know, there's a very interesting state of Anarchy up there. Everything's cracking up. That lot of tycoons; they don't believe in anything. They remind me of the white people in Central Africa. They used to say, 'Well, of course the blacks will drive us into the sea in fifty years time'. They used to say it cheerfully. In other words, 'We know that what we're doing is wrong."
"So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism."
"I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman - whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals."
"The motto was "Pax," but the word was set in a circle of thorns."
"We never envy another's achievement more than when we know very little about how it was attained."
"I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no..."
"Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered."
"We are, for all our polish, of littlestature, and, as human lives,compared with authentic martyrs,of no account."
"This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."
"I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them."
"He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: Maurice's loneliness: it increased."
"I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren."
"I mean that if you are not absolutely sure of a thing, it is so difficult to commit yourself to a definite course of action."
"Follow, poet, follow rightTo the bottom of the night,With your unconstraining voiceStill persuade us to rejoice;With the farming of a verseMake a vineyard of the curse,Sing of human unsuccessIn a rapture of distress;In the deserts of the heartLet the healing fountain start,In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise."
"Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems."'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe."
"When I got a telly we had no aerial, but I discovered that if I or one of the children stood by it you could get a picture. So I had to make a statue that could stand by the telly."
"The danger of memory is that it can turn anyone into a prophet."
"And how did little Tim behave? asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content. "As good as gold, said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."
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