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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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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
Last
Grieve
Grieving
Cease
Tragedy
Loss
Perhaps
Dead
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More quotes by P. D. James

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Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.
P. D. James
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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
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It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words justice, compassion, society, struggle, evil, would be unheard echoes on an empty air.
P. D. James
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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
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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.
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.
P. D. James
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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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Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.
P. D. James
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we can forgive anything as long as it isn't done to us.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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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.
P. D. James
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If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
P. D. James
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It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
P. D. James
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A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.
P. D. James
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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
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Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
P. D. James
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It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.
P. D. James
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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
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Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
P. D. James