Quotes from James A. Michener

But we are not the center of the universe, you and I, neither as individuals nor as the representatives of the whole human race. God's universe must be considered as one great whole composed of interrelated parts, and its majestic purpose is not the gratification of our puny selves.

I've invested years of my life in building a haven here, and here I will remain among my friends as each day we grow older and each month some of us falter, and each year some of us die. That was the great adventure I entered into years ago and with which I am now content.

They believe falsehood, and it's always easier to accept a lie than to find out the truth.

Never be ashamed of anything! If you've made a fool of yourself, just don't do it again. But being ashamed is only being a fool twice for the same reason.

We already know which genes in one chromosome are responsible for Tay-Sachs disease, which afflicts Jews with a fatal disorder. That already permits us to do genetic counseling of young couples with the gene who may want to marry: 'Since you both carry a defective chromosome, better not have children.

He takes what he wants and then gives us back what is already ours.

In China they used thousands of workmen where ten would suffice, because they got them cheap, and the results suffered. I concluded that the most expensive product in the world is cheap labor, because it lures you away from rational operations. You pay a man a high wage, you demand a high return, and from high returns you pick up a good profit. So ever since, I've believed in paying a man high wages, then taxing him like hell for the welfare of the state. The thing that

Shelomith's hand falls from mine, and all I can think of is that somehow I must seek out the new king to see if he plans the building of new edifices. But Shelomith has dropped to her knees and I hear her praying, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

The English could bring into this tight area four hundred and forty-eight thousand soldiers, but they could not find space in their ships for the extra medicines and food needed to save emaciated women and children. They could import a hundred thousand horses for their cavalry, but not three cows for their concentration camps. Guns bigger than houses they could haul in, but no hospital equipment. It was insane; it was horrifying...

A young boy who has not fallen desperately in love has missed getting started in the world of feeling. At any age love is wrong only if it means nothing... You must be the criterion of any love...There's only one test... Does the love you feel make you a bigger and a stronger person?... (I)f any love makes you stronger and more determined to share, then it's much finer than most people ever attain.

From the beginning of history there have been mothers, and mothers have sons.

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner. It is much better to confine yourself to a few authors than to wander at random over many.

Reported the papal legate: "The concept of liberum veto must have been devised in hell by a special devil charged with the task of destroying Christian Poland." In

We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won't be worth having. We are familiar with the abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can't foresee its abuses. They'll come.

The war had passed without invasion of the Choptank, and things were back in their somnolent grooves when the Maryland legislature, composed principally of men from the western shore, passed a bill authorizing the construction of a mighty bridge right across Chesapeake Bay.

With profound shock he realized that of himself he was nothing... By his friends he had been taught to understand music and art and logic and sportsmanship and even the rudiments of honesty. He had been a formless thing until the affectionate interest of others had made him into a sentient being.

Thus he started his education, that marvelous, growing, aching process whereby a mind develops into a usable instrument with a collection of proved experience from which to function, and he was suddenly tired of Yale

When I first pitched my Navy tent on the island of Espiritu Santo to the north of Vila, the natives on nearby Malakula were cannibals. Today, they have representation in the United Nations.

But we are never prepared for what we expect...

I can't remember how old I was, maybe 13, 14, and to see these fellows and hear their stories and to see life come to such a drab ending - my God, a poorhouse in those days was something. You would have to be inert not to respond to it.

It heartens me to think of Verdi who composed thundering operas in his eighties; Michelangelo who did fine work in his ninetieth year, and Titian, who painted better than ever in his one hundredth.

America is a nation with many flaws that only the stupid would deny, but with hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.

It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.