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Helen MacInnes QUOTES

Helen MacInnes QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Helen MacInnes , Decision at Delphi

2 " 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? "

― Helen MacInnes , Decision at Delphi

3 " 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. "

― Helen MacInnes , Assignment in Brittany

4 " Streets are like children, David thought; the small ones go to bed first. "

― Helen MacInnes ,

5 " He passed the first six houses with sadness rather than distaste. They tried so hard, he thought. The Crescent in Edinburgh had been a row of houses all very much alike, too. But similarity, when it has money behind it, becomes a solid wall of convention, of permanence, even of defiance. Similarity, conceived and born in poverty, becomes an inferiority complex. "

― Helen MacInnes ,

6 " Once Burns had admitted frankly that the most difficult thing he had to learn at Oxford was the English. What was it that David had said last summer? 'We are becoming a nation of professional eccentrics. Foreigners provide us with a stage, and we enjoy our little appearances all the more because we convince everyone, including ourselves, that we don't even notice the audience. "

― Helen MacInnes ,

7 " It seemed monstrous that people who could only afford cheap houses should find themselves automatically surrounded by ugliness. "

― Helen MacInnes ,

8 " Hardship and danger destroys fewer people than indulgence. "

― Helen MacInnes , While Still We Live

9 " Well, a man’s life is divided into two parts: there is his work and there is his own private life. Two small worlds which he has to make for himself. And it is only when he is old, and the time for decision is over, that he may realize he did not need to neglect one for the other. For if he concentrated too much on one of them, then he really confused their purposes. He had thought that either a successful career was life, or life itself was a career. He hadn’t realized that his work and his own private life should be given the same amount of thought, that they should grow along with each other, each influencing the other, each developing the other. Without that balance, he will find himself an incomplete man. That’s the tragic thing about age: to realize you have somehow never seen what is happiness until it was too late to start building it up. For it has to be built. Pleasure is a simple thing: you can choose it, buy it, even have it as a gift. It only depends on your taste. But happiness is much more complicated; you have to build it yourself. "

― Helen MacInnes ,

10 " 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 "

― Helen MacInnes , While Still We Live

11 " 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. "

― Helen MacInnes , Prelude to Terror (Robert Renwick #1)

12 " I’ve used "

― Helen MacInnes , While Still We Live

13 " I’ve seen the stupidities committed in the name of idealism and abstract thinking. "

― Helen MacInnes , Above Suspicion

14 " 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.” As he "

― Helen MacInnes , Assignment in Brittany

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

― Helen MacInnes , Assignment in Brittany

16 " to get some brandy for my "

― Helen MacInnes , Assignment in Brittany

17 " 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, "

― Helen MacInnes , While Still We Live

18 " For women, right from the day they went to their first party, always hoped too much: how many dances, seemingly successful, had been grim failures covered over with a smile; how many invitations accepted became invitations regretted; how many plans and dreams had become stupidities; how much pretence that all was well, when it wasn't? We are too personal, she thought, in the way we interpret a look, a tone of voice, a smile. How lucky to be a man and never pay attention to the little things; how fortunate to take people as they are, and not to suffer from taking them as you would like them to be. How terrible to be a woman, to feel the difference between the dream and the reality, and yet to keep dreaming in spite of reality. "

― Helen MacInnes , Rest and Be Thankful

19 " Matthews. For Mr. "

― Helen MacInnes , While Still We Live

20 " 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. "

― Helen MacInnes , Above Suspicion