Temporary Kings Quotes

“Where, as again Vaughan writes, the liberated soul ascends, looking at the sunset towards the west wind, and hearing secret harmonies.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“Later that night mutual approval took physical expression.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“He spoke as if procreation of children were an extraordinary fate to overtake anyone, consequence of imprudence, if not worse.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“Nothing fails like success.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“Enormous simplifications were possibly necessary to carry a deeper truth than lay on the surface of a mass of unsorted detail. That was, after all, what happened when history was written; many, if not most, of the true facts discarded.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“A liability suddenly presented itself, bringing such musings sharply to a close, demanding rapid decisions.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“That morning was the last time I saw Moreland. It was also the last time I had, with anyone, the sort of talk we used to have together. Things drawing to a close, even quite suddenly, was hardly a surprise.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“I always enjoy this title—Cambises, King of Percia: a Lamentable Tragedy mixed full of Pleasant Mirth.’ ‘What's it like?’ ‘Not particularly exciting, but does summarize life.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“EACH RECRIMINATIVE DECADE POSES NEW riddles, how best to live, how best to write. One's fifties, in principle less acceptable than one's forties, at least confirm most worst suspicions about life, thereby disposing of an appreciable tract of vain expectation, standardized fantasy, obstructive to writing, as to living. The quinquagenarian may not be master of himself, he is, notwithstanding, master of a passable miscellany of experience on which to draw when forming opinions, distorted or the reverse, at least up to a point his own. After passing the half-century, one unavoidable conclusion is that many things seeming incredible on starting out, are, in fact, by no means to be located in an area beyond belief.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“Reading novels needs almost as much talent as writing them,' he used to say.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“I had not expected him to be in the least senile, but the sharpness of his manner may have been amplified by some apprehension, shared by myself, that changes must have taken place in both of us during the last twenty years, which could prove mutually disenchanting.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“This is something of a paradox in that the transgression—crime perhaps—of America has been to reject Classicism for Romanticism. The national distaste for moderation—to which Henry Adams referred—inevitably leads to such a choice.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“Enormous simplifications were possibly necessary to carry a deeper truth than lay on the surface of a mass of unsorted detail.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings

“You know growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.”
― Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings