James Hilton Quotes

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...

Perhaps the exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom, if you care to alter the proverb.

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

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.

There was also in his nature a trait which some people might have called laziness, though it was not quite that. No one was capable of harder work, when it had to be done, and few could better shoulde...

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.

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. Di...

Without thought or knowledge, one could have guessed that this bleak world was mountain-high, and that the mountains rising from it were mountains on top of mountains. A range of them gleamed on a far...

Dilettanti.

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.

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...

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

Aunt Viney (short for ’Lavinia’), viewed in the grey daylight that came in through the dining-room window, was always a rather imposing spectacle. She was fifty-one years of age, and had large staring...

Barnard caught the word. Comfortable? he echoed raucously. Why, of course we’re comfortable. We’re just enjoying the trip. Pity we haven’t a pack of cards—we could play a rubber of bridge. Conway welc...

Brookfield will never forget his lovableness, said Cartwright, in a speech to the School. Which was absurd, because all things are forgotten in the end.

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 har...

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 bel...

Conway said quietly, If you’d had all the experiences I’ve had, you’d know that there are times in life when the most comfortable thing is to do nothing at all. Things happen to you and you just let t...

For Chips, like some old sea captain, still measured time by the signals of the past. . . .

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.