Georgie-who-is-Sarah-Drew > Georgie-who-is-Sarah-Drew's Quotes

“…so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,--pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?”
― Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
― John Donne, No man is an island – A selection from the prose

“Some days you wake up and feel quite certain that something is going to happen and it generally doesn't, and when things are really going to happen it never feels like it a bit.”
― Denis Mackail, Greenery Street

“I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself.”
― Robert Frost, Mending Wall

“Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

“Well-meanin' man. Did it all for the best." Stalky curled gracefully round the stair-rail. "Head in a drain-pipe. Full confession in the left boot.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Complete Stalky and Co.

“What do you think of human intelligence?" asked Mavis Pellington lamely.

"Of whose intelligence in particular?" asked Tobermory coldly.

"Oh, well, mine for instance," said Mavis with a feeble laugh.

"You put me in an embarrassing position," said Tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. "When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car. You know, the one they call 'The Envy of Sisyphus,' because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it.”
― Saki

“Stephen can, of course, use my power, for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s his, just as all I am and all I have are his. Not that he ever asks, of course. I’m not sure that he quite believes it.” He looked round at Stephen, a rueful smile dawning, ignoring Fairley’s loud noises of disgust. “But I do hope you are aware, my sweet, somewhere in that absurd heart, that I am ever, entirely, and quite pathetically yours.”
― K.J. Charles, Flight of Magpies

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If I express an interest in Giotto and yarn bombing, Bach and Lady Gaga, I am well-rounded. But if I read Thomas Mann and Harlequin…I must be slipping.”
― Megan Mulry

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.”
― Karl Barth

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Didn't Frankenstein get married?"
"Did he?" said Eggy. "I don't know. I never met him. Harrow man, I expect.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy
eyes—and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“I am a forward-looking girl and don't stay where I am. "Left right, Be bright," as I said in my poem. That's on days when I am one big bounce, and have to go careful then not to be a nuisance. But later I get back to my own philosophical outlook that keeps us all kissable.”
― Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper

“Odd," said Miss Pettigrew conversationally, "the undermining effect of flowers on a woman's common sense.”
― Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

“Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, climbing down from that animal on her return from high Mass.”
― Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond

“Life does often get in the way of one's reading.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.”
― Thomas de Quincey

“You look extremely young," said Miss Nightingale....
"Age isn't really a matter of years, I find," returned Phemie. "I know people twice my age who will never be as old as I am now.”
― Frances Murray, The Burning Lamp

“Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. ”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
― Mark Twain

“In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you. Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. ”
― Saki

“I like the way he says ‘furthermore’,” Merrick observed quietly. “Cos you can tell he means ‘wankers’.”
― K.J. Charles, Flight of Magpies

“You like 'em dangerous, that's your trouble. If they ain't leaving a trail of dead, you ain't interested.”
― K.J. Charles, Feast of Stephen

“I don't believe in demons and pitchforks. But I think, if you had to define hell, you could take a good man and deny him the rites he believed in, and condemn his soul to a slow process of corruption until it was nothing but a mass of rage and hate and seething evil that his true self would have loathed. I think that would be hell.”
― K.J. Charles, A Case of Possession