J.G. Farrell Quotes

#1. War is only a passing phase in business life ... If you want my opinion there's nothing like a spot of patriotism for blinding people to reality.

J.G. Farrell

#2. Fleury had succeeded (but only with difficulty) in overcoming certain qualms as to whether selling one's life as dearly as possible, or even putting it up for sale at all, was, in fact, the wisest course

J.G. Farrell

#3. It seems that's there a ghastly Darwinian principle of economics known as the Law of Substitution which declares, more or less, that "the cheapest will survive". This has all sorts of unpleasant consequences, one of which is that non-economic values tend to be eliminated.

J.G. Farrell

#4. [P]eople are insubstantial. They never last. All this fuss, it's all fuss about nothing. We're here for a while and then we're gone. People are insubstantial. They never last at all.

J.G. Farrell

#5. Surely there's no need to abandon one's reason simply because one is in Ireland.

J.G. Farrell

#6. But now the giant heads of Plato and Socrates, each with an expression of penetrating wisdom carved on his white features, surveyed the river and the melon beds beyond.

J.G. Farrell

#7. The Magistrate suffered from the disability of a free-thinking turn of mind and from a life that was barren and dreary to match.

J.G. Farrell

#8. And everyone would climb the stairs chuckling to their rooms and dream of aces and knaves and a supply of trumps that would last for ever and ever, one trump after another, an invincible superiority subject to neither change nor decay nor old age, for a trump will always be a trump, come what may.

J.G. Farrell

#9. Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?

J.G. Farrell

#10. He remembered declaring that he would come back to her, but not very much else.

J.G. Farrell

#11. He glanced at her, musing on the wonder of a beautiful woman with a disagreeable personality.

J.G. Farrell

#12. Not everyone, the Collector was aware, is improved by the job he does in life; some people are visibly disimproved.

J.G. Farrell

#13. If you were adventurous, scoop out the fragrant, heavenly, alarming flesh of the durian.

J.G. Farrell

#14. The British could leave and half India wouldn't notice us leaving just as they didn't notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them..

J.G. Farrell

#15. A great deal of thought must be given to your daughter's marriage. Otherwise, she will simply slink off like a cat on a dark night to be fertilized under a bush to God knows whom!

J.G. Farrell

#16. The Major only glanced at the newspaper these days, tired of trying to comprehend a situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches.

J.G. Farrell

#17. We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us ... but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?

J.G. Farrell