Quotes from Helen MacInnes

Hardship and danger destroys fewer people than indulgence.

Americans by the very nature of the soft fat they collected around their brains along with all of their comforts, their total ignorance of historical meanings, their delusion that anarchists were either comic little men plotting nothings in a dark cellar or misunderstood cranks--how could Americans be taken seriously in a world of real politics?

I sometimes think that normal, everyday life is only a delusion. We walk on a think crust of earth which we call peace; and every now and again we can hear a rumble below our feet; and sometimes the crust splits and we see that, underneath there is a glowing inferno ready to erupt. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it is always there.

There were some types of men whose wilfulness thrived on the excuses that were made for them. And they were the kind of people who never knew when they had gone far enough in their selfishness, who never knew when to stop. The more allowances that were made for them, the more they presumed.

Perhaps emotion, when it is tightly disciplined, turns into worry.

Britain and our friends, by allowing Colonel Bolt's records to have a grave question mark against your name, would you let that question mark still remain?" Sheila looked puzzled. She was

No shortage in terrorists, Grant observed grimly. They came in all dimensions: groups of political fanatics with blind obedience and perverted social conscience; the trained assassin tracking down their victim in a peaceful Austrian village; a boy in a quiet Washington street killing on vicious impulse. All of them, however different they seemed, bent on destruction. All of them, however motivated, with total contempt for human life.

I've seen the stupidities committed in the name of idealism and abstract thinking.

You are not the only one," he said to himself. "At this moment, in Europe, you are not the only man forcing himself to walk round a cell. Not by a long chalk. So drop all your self-pity. You are lucky compared to some.

Despair never won any game. Defeat came quickly to those who thought of it.

There's nothing like self-pity for thoroughly dissipating a man. And when a nation indulges in that luxury it finds itself with a dictator.

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

Some men would do better to stay poor," Francesca said. " Money only exaggerates their vulgarities.

That's the trouble about regulated ideas: the phrases are never original, the same words keep recurring.

And Mademoiselle Dupre, finding everything unintelligible, was completely reassured: such good-bys were normal among the unfortunate English-speakers, an uncouth language, it affected their minds; or perhaps, poor people, it was not given to all languages to perform with the precision, the clarity, the grace of a French epigram.

He could hear Matthews saying, 'Worry before, and you'll be prepared. Worry afterwards and you'll keep your feet on the ground. But don't worry during action; that's fatal.

He stepped out into the sunny street, a man with a piece of information which he couldn't get rid of, a man who felt useless because his usefulness couldn't be used.

Some day I'll come back and enjoy this place, he promised himself. And smiled to himself, knowing only too well that life had a way of never giving you the time to come back.

Some day. The most hopeful phrase in man's language, the most promising in his thoughts, the most unfulfilled.

Tomorrow, he thought, sounds wonderful: a day for oneself, a day to stretch out on a soft piece of green grass under a birch tree—the kind that had invited him today as he walked toward Falken, with its delicate leaves showing blue sky between them; a book to read, sleep to come softly; no one talking, questioning; no one to worry about, whether friend or enemy. A day to be kept for oneself.

Matthews. For Mr.

efficiency could be properly judged. It would be judged by your self-discipline, your individual intelligence, your mental and emotional balance, your grasp of the true essentials based on your breadth of mind and depth of thought.

He drew on his coat. "I am sorry, Felix. It is just that I am tired of being told I look at life too simply. It isn't naïve to believe that good exists, that evil exists. I have known both of them. I've seen them. I've felt them. They aren't just ideas that you can twist into neat phrases. They aren't words to be clever with. They are too vital. We live by them. Or else we make everything meaningless.

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.