British Literature Quotes

British Literature quotes from various texts (excluding Shakespeare quotes, which can be found under a dedicated menu)
 

Under the Son

Submitted by scotese on Thu, 2009-11-26 10:45

An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.

Thomas More
4.666665
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Song - 3

Submitted by scotese on Fri, 2007-03-16 10:07

If thou find'st one [a true woman], let me know,
  Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
  Though next door we might meet,
Though she where true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
     Yet she
     Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

John Donne
3.5
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Who laughs best

Submitted by scotese on Sun, 2008-12-14 22:38

A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.

Graham Greene
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No Man is an Island

Submitted by jadfair on Wed, 2009-02-18 19:28

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

John Donne (c. 1572–1631), British divine, metaphysical poet. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation 17 (1624).

4.75
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Umbrellas

Submitted by bwheeler on Sat, 2010-07-24 22:14

Each one of us in alone in the world. .... We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

W. Somerset Maugham

The Moon and Sixpence (Chapter 42)

5
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A small red berry

Submitted by scotese on Mon, 2009-06-08 10:47

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
4
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Francis Bacon on Reading and Writing

Submitted by lnarl on Fri, 2009-07-24 03:16

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon

Essays

4
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Happiness

Submitted by scotese on Sat, 2008-09-06 14:18

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

Oscar Wilde
4
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Song 2

Submitted by scotese on Fri, 2007-03-16 10:03

If though be'st born to strange sights,
  Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
  Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when though return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
     And swear
     Nowhere
Lives a woman true, fair.

John Donne
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44 - Part 3

Submitted by scotese on Tue, 2006-11-14 13:59

He is not dead that sometime hath a fall;
  The sun returneth that was under the cloud;
And when fortune hath spit out all her gall,
  I trust good luck to me shall be allowed.
For I have seen a ship into haven fall
  After the storm hath broke both mast and shroud;
And eke the willow that stoopeth with the wind
Doth rise again, and greater wood doth bind.

Henry Howard

He is Not Dead That Sometime Hath a Fall

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