English author quotes Quotes

“I've always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.”

“Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

“Strong reasons make strong actions let us go If you say ay, the king will not say no.”

“Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow.”

“The change is radical it gives us new natures, it makes us love what we hated and hate what we loved, it sets us in a new road; it makes our habits different, it makes our thoughts different, it makes us different in private, and different in public.”

“The worst evils of life are those which do not exist except in our imagination.”

“Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion”

“What? do I love her, that I desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her eyes”

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”

“There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, every thing was terrible.”

“You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;But yet you draw not iron, for my heartIs true as steel: leave you your power to draw,And I shall have no power to follow you.”

“Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.”

“I have no wish to take life, not even human life”

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”

“Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear t that th' opposed may beware of thee.”

“There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”

“Language is the most elementary aspect to our humanness, probably. In addition to that, it's the embodiment, it's the apotheosis of the human experience, it's the way we summarize ourselves.”

“He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May.”

“It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.”

“Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husband's the bigger.”

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

“If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.”

“The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.”

“Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put it away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: 'I'm saving food!' Then a month later when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: 'I'm saving my life!'”

“What a lark! What a plunge!”

“Take you me for a sponge?”

“And, because my role in society - or any artist or poet's role - is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it's like that's the job of the artist in society, not to...they're not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It's fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. … If that's taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that - they're reflections of society... Mirrors.”

“How lovely goodness is in those who, stepping lightly, go smiling through the world.”

“In marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in and day out in the same house.”

“The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.”

“Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburdened crawl toward death.”

“People asking questions, lost in confusion, well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions.”

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

“Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds.”

“Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.”

“I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“Haply a woman's voice may do some goodWhen articles too nicely urged be stood on.”

“Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”

“The earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race." As the land gets cultivated, "it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is in individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent..to every person, rich or poor...because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created, or inherited from those who did”

“There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.”

“It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam," said Frodo, "and I could not have borne that." "Not as certain as being left behind," said Sam. "But I am going to Mordor." "I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you.”

“Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks.”

“If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied.”

“Mrs. Lammle's manner changed under the poor silly girl's embraces, and she turned extremely pale: directing one appealing look, first to Mrs. Boffin, and then to Mr. Boffin. Both understood her instantly, with a more delicate subtlety than much better educated people, whose perception came less directly from the heart, could have brought to bear upon the case.”

“Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once.”

“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?”