James Clavell Quotes

Patience means restraining yourself. There are seven emotions, neh? Joy, anger, anxiety, adoration, grief, fear, and hate. If a man doesn’t give way to these, he’s patient.

he’s not very pro-American and it drives him mad that the British Empire’s no more, that the U.S. is arbiter of the world’s fate and making obvious mistakes,

Remember that fortune and misfortune should be left to heaven and natural law. They are not to be bough by prayer or any cunning device to be thought of by any man or self-styled saint. p848

Without trade the world will become what it was once — a hell where only the strongest arm and the heaviest lash was law. The meek will never inherit the earth. Aye, but at least they can be protected by law to live out their lives as they wish.

Beyond the castle walls, the city lay in almost total darkness. Above, the moon was pallid and misted. It was a brooding, darkling night. And, it seemed to him, doom walked the heavens.

We have a saying that time has no single measure, that time can be like frost or lightning or a tear or siege or storm or sunset, or even like a rock.

Oare ce-s nourii
Daca nu o justificare a cerului?
Oare ce-i viata
Daca nu o amanare a mortii?

Isn't man but a blossom taken by the wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this Land of the Gods real and everlasting?

did. But he was glad her head was deep in his shoulder greatcoat. Again he craned around and caught sight of it, slightly aft and lying flat in the water, now seeming to

Changi for me — of course it's easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event — was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.

The meeting of the Council after the gai-jin had departed, for once, had been happy and filled with laughter at the enemy’s loss of face,

It is a very pretty flag. … I wish I could have a piece of it. I know! If it's so important, I think we should all have a piece of it. Don't you? … Now we should decide — who should be allowed to cut the first piece off!

What are clouds, but an excuse for the sky? What is life, but an escape from death?

Why is it there is always such violence between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? Doesn't daughter-in-law, in time, become mother-in-law? Why does she then always treat her own daughter-in-law to a lashing tongue and make her life a misery, and why does that girl do the same in her turn? Doesn't anyone learn?

How could such a pretty girl become known as the Hag, she wondered. It must be hateful to become old in face and body when you’re young at heart and still strong and tough — so unfair for a woman.