James Hilton Quotes

#1. It did not require a great deal of imagination to picture a world in which power had passed into the hands of Al Capones with their private bombing squadrons.

James Hilton

#2. When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape.

James Hilton

#3. Surely there comes a time when counting the cost and paying the price aren't things to think about any more. All that matters is value - the ultimate value of what one does.

James Hilton

#4. Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue
Chang - Lost Horizon (1933)

James Hilton

#5. It is a fragile thing that can only live where fragile things are loved.

James Hilton

#6. We believe that to govern perfectly it is necessary to avoid governing too much.

James Hilton

#7. But if you go over the line, you don't want to get stuck in a Nevada State court room. Honestly, because Nevada has been doing a good job of putting California criminals in jail. I mean, we couldn't put OJ in jail, but they did. We couldn't put Paris Hilton in jail, but they did.

James Belushi

#8. 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

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

James Hilton

#10. He was a wanderer between two worlds and must ever wander...

James Hilton

#11. And there's another thing, too - it don't hurt when you chip me about it. Thick-skinned and tenderhearted, that's my mixture.

James Hilton

#12. Are you interested, by the way, in etchings? I have one or two here that are considered to be rather choice.

James Hilton

#13. 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

#14. It's a very remarkable story."
"Remarkable's a well-chosen word. It doesn't give you away.

James Hilton

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

James Hilton

#16. She really did possess a love for humanity, and the further removed humanity was, both in space and time, the more she loved it.

James Hilton

#17. You will have Time, that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it.

James Hilton

#18. He was, and he knew it, very quietly in love with the little Manchu. His love demanded nothing, not even reply; it was a tribute of the mind, to which his senses added only a flavor.

James Hilton

#19. I often think that the Romans were fortunate; their civilization reached as far as hot baths without touching the fatal knowledge of machinery.

James Hilton

#20. 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

#21. His guests found it fun to watch him make tea
mixing careful spoonfuls from different caddies.

James Hilton

#22. The jewel has facets," said the Chinese, "and it is possible that many religions are moderately true.

James Hilton

#23. If I had a child who wanted to be a teacher, I would bid him Godspeed as if he were going to war. For indeed the war against prejudice, greed, and ignorance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their lives no less because they may live to see some fraction of the battle won.

James Hilton

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. My goodness, if you think of all the folks in the world who'd give all they've got to be out of the racket and in a place like this, only they can't get out! Are we in the prison or are they?

James Hilton

#27. 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

#28. If net neutrality goes away, it will fundamentally change everything about the Internet.

James Hilton

#29. Pop music has been all but relegated to the remainder bin at MTV and VH1, where high-maintenance concoctions such as Paris Hilton, Flavor Flav, and Hulk Hogan's biohazard clan of bleached specimens provide endless hours of death-hastening diversion.

James Wolcott

#30. In a small cathedral town where changes are few, there are always people who remember who used to live in a particular house, what happened to them there and afterwards, and so on.

James Hilton

#31. And what if it's a trap?" asked Mallinson, but Barnard supplied an answer. "A nice warm trap," he said, "with a piece of cheese in it, would suit me down to the ground.

James Hilton

#32. Miss Brinklow, however, was not yet to be sidetracked. "What do the lamas do?" she continued.
"They devote themselves, madam, to contemplation and to the pursuit of wisdom."
"But that isn't doing anything."
"Then, madam, they do nothing.

James Hilton

#33. 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

#34. This storm you talk of ... t will be such a one, my son, as the world has not seen before. There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are leveled in a vast chaos.

James Hilton

#35. I dislike organized games, swimming pools, fashionable resorts, night clubs, music in restaurants, and political manifestoes; I enjoy driving from coast to coast, good food and drink, a few friends, dogs, the theatre, long walks, music and free conversation.

James Hilton

#36. 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.

James Hilton

#37. And I believe that the Binomial Theorem and a Bach Fugue are, in the long run, more important than all the battles of history.

James Hilton

#38. They didn't think there was anything very odd in anyone being a little odd.

James Hilton

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

James Hilton

#40. Do we really need another picture of Paris Hilton or Naomi Campbell?

James Nachtwey

#41. If we have not found the heaven within,we have not found the heaven without

James Hilton

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

James Hilton

#43. explained Conway, "is a slang word meaning a lazy fellow, a good-for-nothing.

James Hilton

#44. He was not much of a nature-worshipper, but he perceived that nature here was certainly at her best and liveliest. He gave her, as it were, full marks and a nod of approval, feeling that she would do very nicely as a background to his satisfying emotions

James Hilton

#45. You're certain, then, that no human affection can outlast a five-year absence?" "It can, undoubtedly," replied the Chinese, "but only as a fragrance whose melancholy we may enjoy.

James Hilton

#46. There are times in life when the most comfortable thing is to do nothing at all. Things happen to you and you just let them happen.

James Hilton

#47. When it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive.

James Hilton

#48. If you forgive people enough, you belong to them, and they to you, whether either person likes it or not - squatter's rights of the heart

James Hilton

#49. 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

#50. The exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom.

James Hilton