James > James 's Quotes

“you’re certain, then, that no human affection can outlast a five-year absence?” “It can, undoubtedly,” replied the Chinese, “but only as a fragrance whose melancholy we may enjoy.”
― James Hilton, Lost Horizon: A Novel of Shangri-La

“The postures are both a metaphor and a means for that process. They are tools for creating a connection between the imagination and the physical world. Realizing this connection—this union between body and mind—could be called yoga.”
― Benjamin Lorr, Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga

“Yoga is simply one of those things impervious to certainty, as incapable of corruption as it is of authenticity. And no amount of bossy, possessive attempts to claim a “real yoga” will make it otherwise.”
― Benjamin Lorr, Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga

“He was not much of a nature-worshipper, but he perceived that nature here was certainly at her best and liveliest. He gave her, as it were, full marks and a nod of approval, feeling that she would do very nicely as a background to his satisfying emotions”
― James Hilton, The Definitive James Hilton Collection

“It did not require a great deal of imagination to picture a world in which power had passed into the hands of Al Capones with their private bombing squadrons.”
― James Hilton, The Definitive James Hilton Collection

“But now I’m beginning to care again—a little—and it hurts—it’s really more convenient not to have any hopes and fears.”
― James Hilton, The Definitive James Hilton Collection

“Hardship and danger destroys fewer people than indulgence.”
― Helen MacInnes, While Still We Live

“am in revolt against the recent fashion of attaching so much weight to political ideology. For the last fifty years, we have paid too much attention to political differences, just as we used to pay too much attention to religious differences.”
― Helen MacInnes, While Still We Live

“People like me who have never suffered—I mean in the way the people of Korytów and all the other millions of Poles are suffering—can afford to be broad-minded. You and the people who have really suffered must think people like me are not only smug, but callous.” “Only if you tell us that it is wrong to hate,”
― Helen MacInnes, While Still We Live

“Seeing my Camry next to Benny’s Jaguar gave me a pleasantly smug feeling of superiority. It probably did the same for him. “Let’s”
― Tyler Dilts, A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

“There are certain adolescents, usually female, who possess wisdom far in advance of age or explanation. That”
― Randy Wayne White, Ten Thousand Islands

“We have out-sourced the fighting of our wars to a tiny fraction of the population. The reality is that virtually nobody in our country suffers when we go to war: nobody, except the families of those who go.”
― Ian R. Gardiner, The Yompers: With 45 Commando in the Falklands War

“Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone. Perhaps”
― Louis L'Amour, Sitka

“love thy neighbour’ is less a pious injunction than a rule for survival. If you meet one in trouble, you stop — another time he may stop for you.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“Between the intention and the act, life was often a tale told to the deaf. •”
― Martin Cruz Smith, The Girl from Venice

“does require anyone who makes the trip to abandon some precious intuitions, but I think that I have at last found ways of making the act of jettisoning these “obvious truths” not just bearable but even delightful: it turns your head inside out, in a way, yielding some striking new perspectives on what is going on.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

“So every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Now God was going to run him over with his own truck. As he lifted his free arm to cross himself, it occurred to him that he was having an unusually ironic day.”
― Dawn Lee McKenna, Forgotten Coast: Books 1-4

“But it requires no very profound knowledge of history to perceive that military superiority often exists distinct from social civilization, that literary cultivation affords no guarantee for national wisdom and honor, and that theological learning is no proof of individual virtue.”
― George Finlay, George Finlay's History of the Byzantine Empire, 717-1453

“Being a shepherd seems easy. I went with Kaliel last week to tend his flock. The Law says that two must go with the flock to keep an abomination from happening. I can spot an abomination from fifty paces.” Maggie smiled. “And did you prevent any abominations?” “Oh yes, I kept all of the abominations at bay while Kaliel played with his favorite sheep behind the bushes.” “Biff,” Joshua said gravely, “that was the abomination you were supposed to prevent.” “It was?” “Yes.” “Whoops. Oh well, I think I would make an excellent mourner.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“But the old are more resilient than you think. They get used to bad indigestion, putting up with arthritis, gout, gammy legs, bad backs, you name it. They almost expect to hurt.”
― Faith Martin, Murder at Home

“Chinook salmon inherit a magnetic map along with the ability to taste and smell the differences among rivers.”
― Alanna Mitchell, The Spinning Magnet: The Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It

“For my children. For you. So that you could be safe. So that what happened to them,” he nods toward the photo of his mother and his sister, “would never happen to you. Because it will never really go away, this thing. It goes underground for a generation or two, but always reemerges.”
― Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa

“The flames went up 50 to 60 feet in the air. We all bailed out and sought shelter in the rows of potatoes. As these were well grown by August 8th they provided excellent cover.”
― Ken Tout, A Fine Night for Tanks: The Road to Falaise

“That was always the trouble…everything a man wanted to do lay ahead of him.”
― Louis L'Amour, High Lonesome: A Novel

“I ask you, what do I have to hide? The fact that I’m not half the man I wanted to be? The fact that these little pieces of wisdom I string together add up to not much at all?”
― Edward Whittemore, The Jerusalem Quartet

“If there was an overriding message in his journals, it was that people, the world over, were alike in their essential nature—even if they ate their enemies, made love in public, worshipped idols, or, like Aborigines, cared not at all for material goods.”
― Tony Horwitz, Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

“Anchorage is hip deep in the twentieth century. In a downtown bar you can find a deranged redneck watching a Rams game on the wide-screen TV alongside an arts administrator who is working on a production of Waiting for Godot to tour the arctic villages. Both of them will walk around the Eskimo man bundled up asleep on the sidewalk, but the arts administrator will feel an ironic sense of history.”
― John Straley, The Woman Who Married a Bear

“In the divine play of opposites the warrior knows only one thing for certain, that a side must be chosen. Once a side is chosen, the actions have to be dedicated to what is beyond the world of opposites. Even by remaining neutral you help one side or the other, because withholding help is helping the other side win. By not helping one side or the other, you influence the outcome.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War

“neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out.”
― Samuel Pepys, The Diary Of Samuel Pepys