Quirky British Quotes & Sayings

Ten years after the first commercial train service began operating between Liverpool and Manchester, in 1830, the first train timetable was issued. The trains were much faster than the old carriages, so the quirky differences in local hours became a severe nuisance. In 1847, British train companies put their heads together and agreed that henceforth all train timetables would be calibrated to Greenwich Observatory time, rather than the local times of Liverpool, Manchester or Glasgow. More and more institutions followed the lead of the train companies. Finally, in 1880, the British government took the unprecedented step of legislating that all timetables in Britain must follow Greenwich. For the first time in history, a country adopted a national time and obliged its population to live according to an artificial clock rather than local ones or sunrise-to-sunset — Yuval Noah Harari

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can't photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up. — Sloane Crosley

Jesse, you're not going to lose me. I had the situation totally under control." Sort of. "But I have to say that after so many years of you keeping your feelings for me hidden out of propriety, it's really nice to hear you say all those things. Plus, it's emotionally healthy that you're letting them out this way. Keep unburdening yourself." I wrapped my arms around his neck. "What is it exactly, that you find so irresistible about me? Is it my magnetic personality? Or my emerald green eyes? Or maybe it's just my hot bod?" I felt something against my torso. "Oh, I'm getting the impression that it's my hot bod. — Meg Cabot

How do you design the product in a way so that it sells itself?. — Regis McKenna

America's strength lies not in its one-ness, but in its diversity of beliefs and efforts. And it will take all our strength in the coming years to combat global warming alarmism and to keep America from falling into the totalitarian green abyss. — Steven Milloy

Overstand to understand. — Arthur Harris

In the liberal imagination, the money is the government's by default, and the president and Congress determine through the tax code how much to give back to the people. — Matthew Continetti

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility. — John Lennon

Sexuality is a very private thing, 'Provocateur' will make it public — Tyler Shields

You were right," he said faintly. "Change is good-or at least necessary. Take the shard. — L.J.Smith

We each bring our own unique beauty to the world, and how blessed we are to have the freedom to find that beauty in each other. — Heather K. O'Hara

Re-tweeting is a pretty common practice on Twitter, but on an average day, we see maybe one out of 20 posts is a re-tweet. — Ethan Zuckerman

I would definitely return to Austria. They were all good experiences for me, but definitely Austria because there were some ancient Celtic, sacred sites that were in the forest that were quite beautiful. — Nicolas Cage

I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing. — Imogen Cunningham

Pretending to have faith is not the way. You need to call to God to reveal himself to you in his power, and then wait for him to come and find you. — Greg Pruett