Quotes from James Hilton

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.

My goodness, if you think of all the folks in the world who'd give all they've got to be out of the racket and in a place like this, only they can't get out! Are we in the prison or are they ?

The jewel has facets," said the Chinese, "and it is possible that many religions are moderately true.

One had to breathe consciously and deliberately, which, though disconcerting at first, induced after a time an almost ecstatic tranquility of mind. The whole body moved in a single rhythm of breathing, walking, and thinking, the lungs, no longer discrete and automatic, were disciplined to harmony with mind and limb.

On the night before the wedding, when Chips left the house to return to his hotel, she said, with mock gravity: This is an occasion, you know--this last farewell of ours. I feel rather like a new boy beginning his first term with you. Not scared, mind you--but just, for once, in a thoroughly respectful mood. Shall I call you 'sir'--or would 'Mr. Chips' be the right thing? 'Mr. Chips,' I think. Good-bye, then--good-bye, Mr. Chips. . . .

And sometimes, when the bell rang for call-over, he would go to the window and look across the road and over the School fence and see, in the distance, the thin line of boys filing past the bench. New times, new names . . . but the old ones still remained . . . Jefferson, Jennings, Jolyon, Jupp, Kingsley Primus, Kingsley Secundus, Kingsley Tertius, Kingston . . . where are you all, where have you all gone to?

I used up most of my passions and energies during the years I've mentioned, and though I don't talk much about it, the chief thing I've asked from the world since then is to leave me alone.

And, most precious of all, you will have Time—that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it.

He was, and he knew it, very quietly in love with the little Manchu. His love demanded nothing, not even reply; it was a tribute of the mind, to which his senses added only a flavor.

He was forty-eight — an age at which permanence of habits begins to be predictable.

There came a time, he realized, when the strangeness of everything made it increasingly difficult to realize the strangeness of anything;

You were contemplating the mountain, Mr. Conway? Came the inquiry. Yes, it's a fine sight. It has a name, I suppose? It is called Karakal I don't think I've ever heard of it. Is is very high? Over twenty-eight thousand feet. Indeed? I didn't realize there would be anything on that scale outside the Himalayas. Has it been properly surveyed? Whose are the measurements? Whose would you expect, my dear sir? Is there anything incompatible between monasticism and trigonometry?

Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had.

I suppose the truth is that when it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive.

Are you interested, by the way, in etchings? I have one or two here that are considered to be rather choice.

I thought I heard you—one of you—saying it was a pity —umph—a pity I never had—any children... eh?... But I have, you know... I have... The others smiled without answering, and after a pause Chips began a faint and palpitating chuckle. Yes—umph—I have, he added, with quavering merriment. Thousands of 'em... thousands of 'em... and all boys.

And there's another thing, too—it don't hurt when you chip me about it. Thick-skinned and tenderhearted, that's my mixture.

He was a wanderer between two worlds and must ever wander...

But that was not all. He foresaw a time when men, exultant in the technique of homicide, would rage so hotly over the world that every precious thing would be in danger, every book and picture and harmony, every treasure garnered through two millenniums, the small, the delicate, the defenseless—all would be lost like the lost books of Livy, or wrecked as the English wrecked the Summer Palace in Pekin.

No ambitions? And how have you contrived to escape those widespread maladies?

I often think that the Romans were fortunate; their civilization reached as far as hot baths without touching the fatal knowledge of machinery.

For the first time in his life he felt necessary—and necessary to something that was nearest his heart. There is no sublimer feeling in the world, and it was his at last.

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.

that he was both more and less experienced than the youngest new boy at the School might well be; and that, that paradox of age and youth, was what the world called progress.