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Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?

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
Dignity
Meaning
Wasn
Dreaded
Found
Traumatic
Work
Bestow
Men
Unemployment
People
Retirement
Status

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Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
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If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?
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Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.
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Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear.
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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.
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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.
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What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.
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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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the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.
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Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.
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It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
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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.
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Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
P. D. James
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If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
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Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
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gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.
P. D. James
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The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.
P. D. James
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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.
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however long we have to live, there are never enough springs.
P. D. James