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Quotes by English Authors

"I don't enjoy British shows as a rule because British audiences are strange."

"Time is the subtle thief of youth."

"Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor."

"Discretion is the polite word for hypocrisy."

"If you polish things too much, it loses the feeling."

"And it's absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating - and the levels of the communication that I've seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don't we have that here?"

"I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play - not a movie."

"Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty."

"When I'm doing an accent, you shouldn't notice it for a while, if I'm doing it right."

"Some things don't wind up sounding like you'd expect, which is just as well."

"I'm happy being an actor, it's what I have always wanted to do. I'm just lucky I got to do it so early."

"Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced."

"A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car."


"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return."

"Waters are distilled out of Herbs, Flowers, Fruits, and Roots."

"If you be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."

"The Herbs ought to be distilled when they are in their greatest vigor, and so ought the Flowers also."

"I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed."

"I'd very much like to create my own style as a photographer, even if it's just for myself."

"I must have made a good impression because a club official to us into his office and asked me if I would sign on for a year with a view to becoming a professional."

"What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?"


"A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart."

"He that is thy friend indeed, he will help thee in thy need: if thou sorrow, he will weep; if you wake, he cannot sleep; thus of every grief in heart he with thee doth bear a part."


"Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly."


"I have been lucky, of course. Like, last year, if I went out, I'd have to fight to chat someone up. This year, I look exactly the same, which is really scruffy, and yet lots of people seem to have just changed their minds and decided I'm really sexy."

"The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation."

"Rodents can come across as being quite vacant in the personality stakes."
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