English Quotes

Being used to scientific terminology and theory it was always natural for me to push this stuff into songs.

Actually I think Art lies in both directions - the broad strokes, big picture but on the other hand the minute examination of the apparently mundane. Seeing the whole world in a grain of sand, that kind of thing.

The crucial question one comes back to is the examination; without that experience is meaningless. And I think it's true that society is becoming more and more passive, less and less fired up with enthusiasm, in many spheres.

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

This sight... is by far the noblest astronomy affords.

Scarce any problem will appear more hard and difficult, than that of determining the distance of the Sun from the Earth very near the truth: but even this... will without much labour be effected.

Nearer the gods no mortal may approach.

A manufacturing district... sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighbourhood.

We should be more anxious that our afflictions should benefit us than that they should be speedily removed from us.

We are to seek wisdom and understanding only in the length of days.

Rising health care spending occurs because it is beneficial, not a burden on the economy.

Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favor of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced by authority, and recommended by custom.

In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.

In matters of conscience, first thoughts are best. In matters of prudence, last thoughts are best.

Call things by their right names - Glass of brandy and water! That is the current, but not the appropriate name; ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.

No family is sane, is it?

My mum's American. She's from Detroit.

My childhood was very colourful, and I am very good friends with both my parents. We have no secrets.

Lentil dhal is the only thing I can cook.

It sounds trite, but I like telling stories.

If you act scared, your body produces adrenaline.

If pressed, I would say I feel British. It's where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don't feel like a tourist or anything.

I've played an awful lot of repressed people.

I've never been desperate to please my father.

I've always had horrible Valentine's Days.

I'm very nerdy about my music, and I like interrogating people about what they put on playlists.

I'm not consciously avoiding doing a lot of period drama, but I don't really seek it out either.