Women Authors From The United Kingdom

"“I particularly valued her chairmanship of the last Prize Dinner, where her exceptional knowledge of African literature was strongly displayed, as was her deep friendship with her fellow authors. I look forward to reading more of her work.”"

"The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps."

"Some days I feel so bad that I have to drink; some days I feel so bad that I can’t."

"It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. Someone who looks at you, who doesn’t know you, who tells you it’s OK, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness."

"I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts."

"People think it's terribly sad to spend Christmas alone, but it's no sadder, really, than spending any other day alone, is it?"

"Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers."

"Book/Play2 (Book/Play2)"

"Poverty has a way of taking the edge off principles. Hunger can blunt them altogether"

"Book/Play1 (Book/Play1)"

"Non-English quotation."

"Must we always bedeck ourselves in prettiness to be thought pleasing? It would appear so. A woman must look a certain way to be worthy of a man’s attentions. It is expected."

"Many in Batchcombe have suffered greatly, William. They look for someone to blame. It was my mother who made me see that.” She hesitated, then added, “People fear what they cannot explain."

"Slowly Tegan looked up and I saw wonderment on her face. It was of the variety only ever found in those young enough to yet have minds as open as the oceans and hearts longing to have proof of magic."

"After all, are we not measured by the way in which we treat the most vulnerable members of our society?"

"For whatever time we might have, my love. For whatever time we might have."

"She needs the hand of friendship extended. Are we not all of us, at some time or another, dependent on the kindness of others? Would we not wish someone to act selflessly for our sake?"

"fear it is written somewhere in the terms of my parental contract: Fret frequently about well-being of offspring."

"It’s a brilliant example of a writer in total control of her material, apparently effortlessly inhabiting the minds of her characters and giving them wonderfully individual voices."

"My mind is like the willow; it flexes and springs. My heart is a knot of oak. Let them try to wound me."

"Who was it, I wonder, who decided that heartbroken relatives should host a party at the very moment all they wished for was to be left alone to grieve?"

"How much more tuneful are the birds of the woods than the birds of the water. Ducks and geese make their raucous racket without once finding a note of sweetness, whilst these tree dwellers are practiced in the art of melody."

"Knowledge cannot be unknown. Experience cannot be unlived."

"And secrets are dangerous. They start small but grow with every evasive answer or outright lie that protects them. Nevertheless, I confess to finding the closeness such conspiracy breeds irresistibly delicious."

"Nevertheless, disease and misfortune knew no social bounds. Nor did the immensely dangerous business of childbirth"

"And as for company … I do not crave the companionship of other women, for I have never found one who did not judge me against herself and find me either to be envied or pitied. As for the friendship of men … well, when the day comes when one is man enough to treat me as his equal, then, only then, will I allow desire to be my guide."

"there is no courage in being fearless. Do you not know that? A person who knows fear and yet can still think of others, well, he be a brave man."

"Faith requires no proof. No evidence. No explanation. Faith is entirely a matter of trust and belief. We cannot know, we can only believe."

"We are each mistresses of our own happiness. We ought not to look to others to supply it."

"what can be imagined can be brought into being."

"There is none so quick to dismiss what they don’t understand as those who are afraid of it. And maybe with reason."

"For, what is home? Surely more than a set of rooms, a roof, an address? Home suggests belonging. Suggests warmth, safety, companionship. Love."

"Reputation is for those who can afford it."

"Better foolish and honest than clever and false."

"If you are not able to travel, he told me, the next best thing is to read. Read all you can, girl. And store up that knowledge, for you never know when you will need it."

"To learn, you must be humble. You must be prepared to admit your ignorance. You must allow yourselves to be filled with the vital information presented to you via the skills and dedication of those who have gone before you down the long path to enlightenment."

"In his Rule, St. Benedict entrusted all the material concerns of the monastery to a single official. The cellarer, as he was called, was to follow the abbot's instructions in all things, but with this proviso it was to give the monks their due allowance of food at the appointed time, take care of the sick, the children who were then part of the monastic community, and the poor, and look after the monster's utensils and property as though these were the sacred vessels of the altar."

"Much work that is absolutely essential for the continuance and progress of an ordered society has a severely limited attraction for those who perform it. How, nevertheless, men and women were persuaded to work regularly or at all in the Middle Ages has provided one of the central themes in the study of the period, for this is what we study in the institutions of slavery, serfdom and villeinage—all three were ways and means of persuading reluctant workers to work."

"It is now widely agreed that the economy of western Europe contracted in the later Middle Ages, but the causes of this depression and its time-limits are still disputed. Professor Postan argues that the depression was intimately connected with a decline in population beginning early in the fourteenth century and brought about by the operation of Malthusian checks and soil exhaustion."

"Between the early fifteenth century and the late, the expectation of life of a monk at age 20 fell by eight years, and at age 25 by more than six."

"They will turn my passion into something gross and wrong... It is only love, Helenonly that."

"With me and my queer nature, that set me so at odds with the world and all its ordinary rules, I could not find a place in it to live and be content."

"It is the philosophies of this great race that I propose to examine. It is interesting to wonder along what lines it might have developed later if its ancestral heritage had been less diffused and intermingled with other such different stocks as it found in India on arrival, or were forced by many invasions and conquests to accept later."

"Whereas in India the soul was free from the beginning to choose what it would, ranging from the dry bread of atheism to the banquets offered by many-colored passionate gods and goddesses, each shadowing forth some different aspect of the One whom in the inmost chambers of her heart India has always adored. Therefore the spiritual outlook was universal. Each took unrebuked what he needed. The children were at home in the house of their father, while Europe crouched under the lash of a capricious Deity whose ways were beyond all understanding."

"But while India fixed her eyes on the Ultimate she did not forget that objective science is the beginning of wisdom. There the foundations of mathematical and mechanical knowledge were well and truly laid by the Noble Race."

"India has had a spiritual freedom never known until lately to the West. Christianity when it came offering its spiritual philosophy of life imposed an iron dogma upon the European peoples. Those who could not accept this dogma, whatever it happened to be at the moment, paid so heavy a penalty that the legend of the Car of Juggernaut (Jagannath) is far truer of Europe than Asia.""

"Many centuries ago the Ranipur Kingdom was ruled by the Maharao Rai Singh a prince of the great lunar house of the Rajputs. Expecting a bride from some far away kingdom (the name of this is unrecorded) he built the Hall of Pleasure as a summer palace, a house of rare and costly beauty. A certain great chamber he lined with carved figures of the Gods and their stories, almost unsurpassed for truth and life. So, with the pine trees whispering about it the secret they sigh to tell, he hoped to create an earthly Paradise with this Queen in whom all loveliness was perfected. And then some mysterious tragedy ended all his hopes. It was rumoured that when the Princess came to his court, she was, by some terrible mistake, received with insult and offered the position only of one of his women. After that nothing was known. Certain only is it that he fled to the hills, to the home of his broken hope, and there ended his days in solitude, save for the attendance of two faithful friends who would not abandon him even in the ghostly quiet of the winter when the pine boughs were heavy with snow and a spectral moon stared at the panthers shuffling through the white wastes beneath."

"There is a place uplifted nine thousand feet in purest air where one of the most ancient tracks in the world runs from India into Tibet."

"In this vast and little-known epic — a series of gorgeously colored romances of lovely queens and mighty kings, full of a fascination that only those who care for true romance can realize — lies embedded a pearl of whose beauty and luster the world is aware. It is known as the Lord’s Song — or the Song Celestial — and it represents one of the highest flights of the conditioned spirit to its unconditioned Source ever achieved. It is assigned to the fifth century B.C. though opinions as to dates vary."

"And the Mahabharata and Ramayana may in consequence be said to be the Bibles of the people as well as their inexhaustible treasure-houses of story... A treasury of story indeed! I read almost daily in both, marveling at the vast fertility, the tropic splendor of romance unfolded in either, but still more at the nobil- ity of ideals set forth, the great passion for the Unseen, the Beautiful, and Entirely Desirable, both in man and woman, which has always been the soul of India."