top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by English Authors
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
"He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire."
"I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any-after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?"
"It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet."
"Consider the Essay as a political pamphlet on the Revolution side, and the fact that it was the Whig gospel for a century, and you will see its working merit."
"That last winter was a tragic story and I got no personal honour out of it but I was a witness to it."
"Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs."
"Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed."
"It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered."
"Chance' is just a word expressing ignorance."
"I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!"
"The salvation of the elect was as certain before His advent, though accomplished by it, as afterwards."
"Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."
"In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
"Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position."
"A guy called Arthur Brown... was a big influence of mine... and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull."
"He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable."
"The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's."
"I like them all - I don't always approve. I see myself as a sort of benevolent uncle to these characters, and I can see why they do what they do; sometimes they make some mistakes, but at heart I think they're decent."
"The best thing I know between France and England is the sea."
"I'm pretty tenacious when it comes to problems."
"Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor."
"IF is a very long word in Formula One; in fact, IF is F1 spelled backwards."
"The more you know about a species, the more you understand about how better to help protect them."
"But he was absolutely alone. No one ever wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met."
"You can sometimes learn more working with less talented people, because you learn to survive."
"What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form."
"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl."
"Inflated descriptions by the pen or exaggerated illustrations by the pencil."
"Nothing could be recorded in those days except by aiming a movie camera at the television screen. It was at least another 10 years before they had any kind of recording medium."
bottom of page