Quote

We English are good at forgiving our enemies it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

P. D. James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Friends
Sarcasm
War
Sarcastic
Good
Enemies
Release
Obligation
Forgiving
English
Releases
Enemy
Liking

More quotes by P. D. James

Image
Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
P. D. James
Image
No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
P. D. James
Image
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!
P. D. James
Image
read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.
P. D. James
Image
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.
P. D. James
Image
Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
P. D. James
Image
The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.
P. D. James
Image
we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.
P. D. James
Image
Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
P. D. James
Image
In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.
P. D. James
Image
The modern holy trinity is money, sex and celebrity.
P. D. James
Image
however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
P. D. James
Image
Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.
P. D. James
Image
Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.
P. D. James
Image
All these problems [deciding cases] are easier for people who believe in God. Those of us who don't or can't have to do the best we can. That's what the law is, the best we can do. Human justice is imperfect, but it's the only justice we have.
P. D. James
Image
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
P. D. James
Image
In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.
P. D. James
Image
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
P. D. James
Image
Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine it may be superficial but it isn't false.
P. D. James
Image
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
P. D. James