English Quotes

Like most of the world's population I'm into coffee, but in a properly big and important way. My perfect weekend would start with a pint of coffee.

I didn't plan to be the rude middle-class comedian. You write a certain type of joke that you find funny, and mine happen to be often rude. Yes, it's juvenile, but that's me.

A surprising amount of my jokes sound very implausible but are true.

I was in love with the idea of being in love with a woman way before I was actually in love with one.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

I can write, He floated up to the ceiling, and a baby rabbit came out of his pocket, grew wings, and flew away. And you will believe that it really happened. That's magic, isn't it?

Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.

With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.

Where there had been only jeers or taunts at first, crowds come to listen with serious and sympathetic men.

When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!

Whatever the practical value of the Walden experiment may be, there is no question that the book is one of the most vital and pithy ever written.

We lived within two hundred yards of the sea, and its voice was in our ears night and day.

The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.

The general fact of surplus value, namely that the workmen does not get the full value of his labours, and that he is taken advantage of by the capitalist, is obvious.

My ideas had been taking a socialistic shape for many years; but they were lacking in definite outline.

It is curious that, with my somewhat antinomian tendencies, I should have gone to Trinity Hall - which was, and is, before all a Law College - and should thus have been thrown into close touch with the legal element in life.

IN April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.

I was in the Square at the time. The crowd was a most good-humoured, easy going, smiling crowd; but presently it was transformed. A regiment of mounted police came cantering up.

I should like these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what is going on, I shall not be able to communicate.

I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why I didn't.

Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.

Early in 1888 one or two of us got together to establish our own Sheffield Socialist Society.

Do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped - to reach it.

For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.

So, in other words, how you respond to a sculpture, how a viewer sees the sculpture, is vital.

Early One Morning takes time and, I mean, all things like that I felt were very important.

But I don't think that sculpture belongs in everyday life like a table does, or like a chair.

Law is a very addictive profession.

He behaved like an ostrich and put his head in the sand, thereby exposing his thinking parts.

Exercise caution, as I have advised many people.