35
" tribesmen came forward from all directions, surrounding the machine and effectively preventing any one from getting out of it except the pilot. The latter clambered to earth and held excited colloquy with them, during which proceeding it became clear that, so far from being Fenner, he was not an Englishman at all, and possibly not even a European. Meanwhile cans of gasoline were fetched from a dump close by, and emptied into the exceptionally capacious tanks. Grins and disregarding silence met the shouts of the four imprisoned passengers, while the slightest attempt to alight provoked a menacing movement from a score of rifles. Conway, who knew a little Pushtu, harangued the tribesmen as well as he could in that language, but without effect; while the pilot’s sole retort to any remarks addressed to him in any language was a significant flourish of his revolver. Midday sunlight, blazing on the roof of the cabin, grilled the air inside till the occupants were almost fainting with the heat and with the exertion of their protests. They were quite powerless; it had been a condition "
― James Hilton , Lost Horizon
37
" He said this with such simplicity that Conway could not help responding: “I’m not much of an authority on what people call high finance.” It was a lead, and the American accepted it without the slightest reluctance. “High finance,” he said, “is mostly a lot of bunk.” “So I’ve often suspected.” “Look here, Conway, I’ll put it like this. A feller does what he’s been doing for years, and what lots of other fellers have been doing, and suddenly the market goes against him. He can’t help it, but he braces up and waits for the turn. But somehow the turn don’t come as it always used to, and when he’s lost ten million dollars or so he reads in some paper that a Swede professor thinks it’s the end of the world. Now I ask you, does that sort of thing help markets? Of course, it gives him a bit of a shock, but he still can’t help it. And there he is till the cops come—if he waits for ’em. I didn’t. "
― James Hilton , Lost Horizon
39
" Now let me begin by sketching for you a very agreeable picture. You are still, I should say, a youngish man by the world’s standards; your life, as people say, lies ahead of you; in the normal course you might expect twenty or thirty years of only slightly and gradually diminishing activity. By no means a cheerless prospect, and I can hardly expect you to see it as I do—as a slender, breathless, and far too frantic interlude. 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! But you, it may be, are destined to be more fortunate, since by the standards of Shangri-La your sunlit years have scarcely yet begun. It will happen, perhaps, that decades hence you will feel no older than you are to-day—you may preserve, as Henschell did, a long and wondrous youth. But that, believe me, is only an early and superficial phase. There will come a time when you will age like others, though far more slowly, and into a condition infinitely nobler; at eighty you may still climb to the pass with a young man’s gait, but at twice that age you must not expect the whole marvel to have persisted. We are not workers of miracles; we have made no conquest of death or even of decay. All we have done and can sometimes do is to slacken the tempo of this brief interval that is called life. We do this by methods which are as simple here as they are impossible elsewhere; but make no mistake; the end awaits us all. "
― James Hilton , Lost Horizon
40
" Think for a moment. You will have time to read—never again will you skim pages to save minutes, or avoid some study lest it prove too engrossing. You have also a taste for music—here, then, are your scores and instruments, with Time, unruffled and unmeasured to give you their richest savor. And you are also, we will say, a man of good fellowship—does it not charm you to think of wise and serene friendships, a long and kindly traffic of the mind from which death may not call you away with his customary hurry? Or, if it is solitude that you prefer, could you not employ our pavilions to enrich the gentleness of lonely thoughts? "
― James Hilton , Lost Horizon