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James Hilton QUOTES

James Hilton QUOTES

1 " People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little. "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

2 " If I could put it into a very few words, dear sir, I should say that our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excesses of all kinds—even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself. "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

3 " The will of God or the lunacy of man - it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you wanted a good enough reason for most things. Or, alternatively (and he thought of it as he contemplated the small orderliness of the cabin against the window background of such frantic natural scenery), the will of man and the lunacy of God. "

― James Hilton

4 " For he did not, he would have said, care for women; he never felt at home or at ease with them; and that monstrous creature beginning to be talked about, the New Woman of the nineties, filled him with horror. He was a quiet, conventional person, and the world, viewed from the haven of Brookfield, seemed to him full of distasteful innovations; there was a fellow named Bernard Shaw who had the strangest and most reprehensible opinions; there was Ibsen, too, with his disturbing plays; and there was this new craze for bicycles which was being taken up by women equally with men. Chips did not hold with all this modern newness and freedom. He had a vague notion, if he ever formulated it, that nice women were weak, timid, and delicate, and that nice men treated them with a polite but rather distant chivalry. "

― James Hilton , Good-Bye, Mr. Chips

5 " Then the whole range, much nearer now, paled into fresh splendor; a full moon rose, touching each peak in succession like some celestial lamplighter, until the long horizon glittered against a blue-black sky. "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

6 " Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization - The safe men. The compromisers. The moneymakers. The muddlers-through.

Politics is full of them... so is businesses... so is the church. They're popular. Successful. Some of them work hard, other are slack, but all of them could tell a good story.

Never where there such charming gravediggers in the world's history. "

― James Hilton

7 " As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to be a writer. "

― James Hilton , Random Harvest

8 " Where had they all gone to, he often pondered; those threads he had once held together, how far had they scattered, some to break, others to weave into unknown patterns? The strange randomness of the world beguiled him, that randomness which never would, so long as the world lasted, give meaning to those choruses again. "

― James Hilton , Good-Bye, Mr. Chips

9 " What a host of little incidents, all deep-buried in the past -- problems that had once been urgent, arguments that had once been keen, anecdotes that were funny only because one remembered the fun. Did any emotion really matter when the last trace of it had vanished from human memory; and if that were so, what a crowd of emotions clung to him as to their last home before annihilation? He must be kind to them, must treasure them in his mind before their long sleep. "

― James Hilton , Good-Bye, Mr. Chips

10 " Have you ever been going somewhere with a crowd and you're certain it's the wrong road and you tell them, but they won't listen, so you just have to plod along in what you know is the wrong direction till somebody more important gets the same idea? "

― James Hilton , Random Harvest

11 " 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. "

― James Hilton

12 " It seemed to him that the little Manchu had never looked so radiant. She gave him a most charming smile, but her eyes were all for the boy. "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

13 " We believe that to govern perfectly it is necessary to avoid governing too much. "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

14 " The right mixture of caring and not caring - I suppose that's what love is. "

― James Hilton , Nothing So Strange

15 " if we have not found the heaven within,we have not found the heaven without "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

16 " There's only one thing more important... and that is, after you've done what you set out to do, to feel that it's been worth doing. "

― James Hilton , Random Harvest

17 " Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers? "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

18 " But now I’m beginning to care again—a little—and it hurts—it’s really more convenient not to have any hopes and fears. "

― James Hilton , The Definitive James Hilton Collection

19 " The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime! "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon

20 " We have reason. It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision long, long ago. I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other. The time must come, my friend, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. "

― James Hilton , Lost Horizon