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It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.

P. D. James

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P. D. James
Age: 94 †
Born: 1920
Born: August 3
Died: 2014
Died: November 27
Member Of The House Of Lords
Novelist
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Phyllis Dorothy James
Phyllis Dorothy James
Baroness James of Holland Park
Phyllis James
Baroness Phyllis Dorothy James
Towards
Direct
Wisdom
Getting
Energy
Shows
Life
Considerable
Energies

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A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.
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Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
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Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
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First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more ­effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?
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No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
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Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
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Every island to a child is a treasure island.
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The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.
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If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?
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There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
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A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.
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Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.
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The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
P. D. James
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Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.
P. D. James
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There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.
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Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.
P. D. James