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Quotes by English Authors
"The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise."
"I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about."
"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!"
"Four months of preparation and about 12 hours of shooting turned into about 30 seconds of screen time."
"What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done."
"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike."
"Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability."
"There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you."
"Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it."
"There is something very basic to the sense of listening. The sense of hearing is the only one that operates totally from vibrations, without other physical or chemical reactions to receive the sensations."
"This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people and for the people'"
"We first make our habits, and then our habits make us."
"Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures."
"The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa - slightly off balance."
"Although the French were very friendly and helpful. On one location we were to film at the top of the Eiffel Tower but we couldn't, as it was so misty with four inches of snow on the ground. We couldn't see a thing but we finally got it done."
"I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head."
"Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts."
"All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I'm very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me."
"DESDEMONA: I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.OTHELLO: Oh, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweetThat the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born!DESDEMONA: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?OTHELLO: Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,Made to write "whore upon?"
"The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do."
"It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all."
"I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better."
"Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to its possessor."
"But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor."
"It still frightens me a little bit to think that so much of my life was totally devoted to Star Trek and almost nothing else."
"I hate to be what is called a clever girl-there are too many of that sort now!"
"Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less!Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade?Or ask of yonder argent fields above,Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?"
"I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this - never to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening."
"Sonnet: Political GreatnessNor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,History is but the shadow of their shame,Art veils her glass, or from the pageant startsAs to oblivion their blind millions fleet,Staining that Heaven with obscene imageryOf their own likeness. What are numbers knitBy force or custom? Man who man would be,Must rule the empire of himself; in itMust be supreme, establishing his throneOn vanquished will, quelling the anarchyOf hopes and fears, being himself alone."
"Without adversity a person hardly knows whether they are honest or not."
"The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend."
"This is ridiculous, I mean, wholly ridiculous. It never did any child any harm to have something that was a tiny bit above them anyway, and I claim that anyone who can follow Doctor Who can follow absolutely anything."
"Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition."
"At home I've got a very puerile, juvenile sense of humour."
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