To You, Mr. Chips Quotes

“Their lack of interest is part of their lack of worry over the future, which is a natural thing—and in 1917 a good thing, too. For then at Brookfield there were boys who were to die within a year; and they were quite happy, playing rugger and conjugating verbs and reading the War news, only half aware that the last concerned them any more than the second, or as much as the first.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“but now, thank heaven, he didn’t care, and one of the lovely joys of growing old was to add to this list of trivial things one didn’t care about, so that one had more time to care for the things that were not trivial.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“She was rather less enthusiastic than he had hoped. “Mind y don’t tire yerself, that’s all,” she commented. “There’ll be a lot of work arranging a thing of that sort, and if you was to ask me, sir, you’re a bit past the age for giving parties!”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Renny was doubtless sincere in wanting to get away from crowds of autograph-hunting admirers, he did not altogether relish the ease with which in Brookfield he was doing so. There were moments when, perhaps, the success of his incognito peeved him just a trifle. It would have been truly awful if a mob of girls had torn the clothes off his back (they had done this several times in America), but when they didn’t, then … well, there were moments when Renny’s attitude might almost have been diagnosed as: Why the hell don’t they try to, anyway …?”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“I see,” answered Chips, without seeing at all. He could not really understand why a man born in Brooklyn should have a sentimental desire to visit Brookfield: he could not understand why letters should be counted instead of read; he could not understand why a man who wished to avoid publicity should travel around with the kind of luggage that would rivet the attention of every fellow-traveller and railway porter. These things were mysteries.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“He thought he had never seen the mountain look more beautiful, and he remembered, with a sharp ache of longing, his first meeting with his wife on another mountain not many miles away—the lovely girl whose marriage and death had taken place twenty years before, yet whose memory still lay as fresh as moonlight in his heart. And he knew, in some ways, that it was David as well as the mountain that had made him think of her, for she would have liked David, would have known how to deal with him—she had always known how to deal with boys, and whatever he himself had learned of that difficult art, the most had been from her.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“That boy’s a terror,” continued Mr. Renshaw, pointing after him. “He’s not mine, understand—he’s my second wife’s by an earlier marriage. My lad’s quite different—fine young chap of twenty-five—accountant in Birmingham—settled down very nicely, he has. But David … well, it’s my belief there’s bad blood in him somewhere.” Chips went on listening—there was nothing else to do. “Been sacked from two schools already … a proper good-for-nothing, if you ask me.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Examination papers, class lists, terminal reports—all could dissolve into the thin air of the mountains, leaving not a wrack behind. But he could never quite lose his interest in boys. And when, one September morning in 1917 in the English mountain-town of Keswick, he saw an eager-faced freckled youngster of about eleven or twelve swinging astride a hotel-balcony reading a book, he couldn’t help intervening: “I’d be careful of that rail, if I were you.’ It doesn’t look too safe.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“What he did understand, however, was the notion that any one of his old boys never ceased to be his, no matter what happened.… no matter what happened … and therefore, though he was old enough to find such a duty arduous, he attended every session of the four-day trial of Charles Menvers.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Systems, my boy, are hard things to fight. I warn you of that.… Well, I must do something with you—umph—I suppose. What do you—umph—suggest?” “I—I don’t know, sir.” “The—umph—usual?” “If you like, sir.” “Umph—as if I care—so long as you’re satisfied—umph … but there’s one thing, Waveney …” “Yes, sir?” “Be—be kind, my boy.” “Kind, sir?” “Yes—umph—even when you’re fighting systems. Because there are—umph—human beings—behind those systems.… And now—umph—run along.” Chips watched the boy’s receding figure as he walked to the door across the study carpet; then, with a half-mile to himself, he called out: “Oh, Waveney——” “Yes, sir?” “What—umph—are you going to be when you grow up?” “I don’t know, sir.” “Well—umph—I think I can tell you. You’re going to be either—umph—a great man or—umph—a confounded nuisance.… Or—umph—both … as so many of ’em are.… Remember that.… Good-bye, my boy.…”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Actually he was forty-three, and owing to a weak heart that made him ineligible for the Army, he had come to Brookfield as a war-time deputy. How a schoolmaster must envy a boy who is obviously going to grow up into a man of much superior personality to his own, and how easily that envy can turn to loathing if the boy senses it and is cruel!”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“never did he adore anyone quite so purely as he adored the Candidate, or hate so fiercely as he hated the Other Candidate. And never afterwards did he tell such a downright thumping lie, nor was there a time ever again when right and wrong seemed to him so simply on this side and on that. A little boy then, and a man now if he had lived; he was killed on July 1st, 1916. When Chips read out his name in Brookfield Chapel that week, his voice broke and he could not go on.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Well, what the devil do you want?” Now that the man had used a swear, like that, Gerald was more certain than ever that he must be the Other Candidate. And knowing that he was the Other Candidate, it was easy to see what a wicked face he had. Terrible eyes and a curving nose and a sneery mouth, like pictures of pirates. And what he wanted to do, undoubtedly, was to steal the Candidate’s letter that Gerald was carrying. Gerald looked around wildly.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“One of them was my father. He did not train aristocrats to govern the Empire or plutocrats to run their fathers’ businesses, but he employed his wise and sweetening influence just as valuably among the thousands of elementary schoolboys who knew and know him still in a London suburb.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Occasionally throughout the ages, the clouds of history show a rift and through it the sun of human betterment shines out for a few deceptive moments over a limited area.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“True that Huxley was attacked for teaching that men and monkeys were somewhat the same; but he was never exiled for refusing to teach that Jews and Gentiles were altogether different.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“There can be no war to end wars, because all wars begin other wars. There can be no such thing as a war to save democracy, because all wars destroy democracy. There could have been a peace to save what was left of democracy, but the chance of that came and went in 1919—the saddest year in all the martyrdom of man.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Let us hope, however, that they will not forget the spirit of tolerance which to-day is in such grave peril because it is in the very nature of tolerance to take tolerance for granted.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“These things I recount, not for vainglory (for they were not particularly good poems), but to reveal something of the mood of Brookfield, in which a boy could be eccentric enough to write poetry and subversive enough to write pacifist and revolu tionary poetry without being either persecuted or ostracised. As a matter of fact, I was editor of the school magazine, and wrote for it articles, stories, and poems of all kinds and in all moods. Nobody tried to censor them; nobody tried to depose or harass me. Looking back on this genial indifference, it seems to me that Brookfield in wartime was not only less barbarian than the world outside it, but also less barbarian than many institutions in what we have since chosen to call peacetime.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Sometimes these guns were actually audible, or we fancied they were; every weekday there was a rush to the newspapers, every Sunday a batch of names read out to stilled listeners. The careful assessments of schoolmasters were blotted out by larger and wilder markings; a boy who had been expelled returned as a hero with medals; those whose inability to conjugate avoir and être seemed likely in 1913 to imperil a career were to conquer France’s enemies better than they did her language; offenders gated for cigarette-smoking in January were dropping bombs from the sky in December. It was a frantic world; and we knew it even if we did not talk about it. Slowly, inch by inch, the tide of war lapped to the gates of our seclusion; playing-fields were ploughed up for trenches and drill-grounds; cadet-corps duties took precedence over classroom studies; the school that had prepared so many beloved generations for life was preparing this one, equally beloved, for death.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Outwardly, however, I pretended to share all the normal enthusiasms over victory and despairs over defeat; and I think I carried it off pretty well. There is always some ultimate thing you must do when you are in Rome, even if the Romans are exceptionally broad-minded.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“I worked hard at this grammar-school, chiefly because homework was piled on by various masters acting independently of each other. I was a quick worker, but often I did not finish till nearly midnight, and how the slower workers managed I can only imagine. I have certainly never worked so hard in my life since, and it has often struck me as remarkable that an age that restricts the hours of child-employment in industry should permit the much harder routine of schoolwork by day and homework in the evenings.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“I was also puzzled by the vast number of people in history who were put to death because they would not change their religion; indeed, the entire fuss about religion throughout history was inexplicable to a boy”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“To make up for all I have forgotten, there is this that I have acquired, and I call it sophistication since it is not quite the same thing as learning. It is the flexible armour of doubt in an age when too many people are certain.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“I suppose I could still read Virgil or Sophocles with the help of a dictionary, but I do not do so, because it would give me no pleasure”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“At the elementary school, for instance, I spent an hour a week on “botany,” which was an excuse for wandering through Epping Forest in charge of a master who, in his turn, regarded the hour as an excuse for a pleasant smoke in the open air. The result is that Botany to me to-day stands for just a few words like “calyx,” “stamen,” and “capillary attraction,” plus the memory of lovely hours amidst trees and bracken. I do not complain.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster

“Seventeen years—quite a large slice out of a life, when you come to think about it. And yet the ways I have earned my living since—by writing newspaper articles, novels, and film scenarios—were not taught me at any of these schools and colleges. Furthermore, though I won scholarships and passed examinations, I do not think I now remember more than twenty per cent of all I learned during these seventeen years, and I do not think I could now scrape through any of the examinations I passed after the age of twelve.”
― James Hilton, To You, Mr. Chips: More Stories of Mr. Chips and the True Story Behind the World's Most Beloved Schoolmaster