John Christopher Quotes

...nothing was of value, without a mind that challenged and inquired.

It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.

In the realm of dream and imagination all men are equal.

And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.

We all have to learn to live with our losses, and to use our regrets to spur us on in the future.

What tricks the mind is what the mind is glad to be tricked by.

Living with guns, as I have done, one loses the habit of looking for gentleness in men.

The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one's own strength but in the exploitation of the other side's weaknesses.

The original version of 'The White Mountains' was probably just about worth publishing.

It is hard to be defensive toward a danger which you have never imagined existed.

Even though brutality used toward the young, by reason of their defenselessness, provoked greater anger and greater pity, it was still true that they were resilient. Was the wind tempered to the shorn lamb? He grimaced. All the lambs were shorn now, and the wind was from the northeast, full of ice and black frost.

People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen, all the vast multitudes of them, but you can only love those you know - and that with difficulty.

I think before I act
and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.

Everyone recognized she was without malice and therefore she provoked none.

There is always something to lose. But maybe more to gain.

More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world.

I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.

Morality, for all the conditioning to which the human mind has been and is subjected, is always a personal choice in the last analysis.

What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was
cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten
as long as it was something they'd come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren't really alive.

I wanted to ask which war
the Boer or the Crimean? It was amazing how old people could talk about The War, as though that meant something.

Have a drink, and try to relax. All right, have another drink. There are times when getting drunk's not a bad idea.

The order should not have been given,' she said. 'It was not done for the city but for your private ends.'
I shook my head. 'There is no difference.'
You believe that?'
A Prince must, or he is no Prince.

Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling.

What men do matters more than what they know.

A reader should know what he might reasonably expect under a particular label.

The moors themselves were barer, of course. The heather still grew, but the moorland grasses were gone; the outcrops of rocks jutted like teeth in the head of a skull.

There are times when thinking about something is the worst possible policy.

There are disappointments in all men's lives, even those who have achieved their ambition, and there are compensations.

We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies.

A general does not use the same troops over and over again.

Some people are oil and water.

His anger was as great as mine, but hot where mine was cold.

Truth does not surround itself with lies.

A long time ago. I came to the understanding that all men are friends by convenience and enemies by choice.

If one is seeking reasons for disloyalty, it is useful to find something one can resent.