Lost Horizon

by James Hilton

But it was to the head of the valley that his eyes were led irresistibly, for there, soaring into the gap, and magnificent in the full shimmer of moonlight, appeared what he took to be the loveliest mountain on earth. It was an almost perfect cone of snow, simple in outline as if a child had drawn it, and impossible to classify as to size, height or nearness. It was so radiant, so serenely poised, that he wondered for a moment if it were real at all.

I think he said something about a lamasery near here, along the valley, I gathered, where we could get food and shelter. Shangri-La, he called it.

And as for the War, if you’d been in it you’d have done the same as I did, learned how to funk with a stiff lip.”

“I dare say they’ve got pots of money hidden away, like the Jesuits.

“What do the lamas do?” she continued. “They devote themselves, madam, to contemplation and to the pursuit of wisdom.” “But that isn’t doing anything.” “Then, madam, they do nothing.”

they all wanted something for nothing and hadn’t the brains to get it for themselves.”

His mind remained so extraordinarily clear that he even embarked upon a study of certain mystic practices that the Indians call yoga, and which are based upon various special methods of breathing.

For instead of convalescing idly, as might have been expected, he plunged forthwith into rigorous self-discipline somewhat curiously combined with narcotic indulgence. Drug-taking and deep-breathing exercises—it could not have seemed a very death-defying regimen; yet the fact remains that when the last of the old monks died, in 1794, Perrault himself was still living.

The airman bearing loads of death to the great cities will not pass our way, and if by chance he should he may not consider us worth a bomb.”

It’s a complete mystery. But that’s no reason for accepting tales that are physically impossible. Believing in hot baths because you’ve had them is different from believing in people hundreds of years old just because they’ve told you they are.”

you’d hesitate to believe all you were told even in an English monastery—I really can’t see why you should jump at everything just because you’re in Tibet!”

“That’s an acute remark, Mallinson. I suppose the truth is that when it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive.”