James Clavell: Trending quotes

James Clavell trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
James Clavell: 110 quotes0 likes

“.., by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

“The scarcity of years does not necessitate lack of wisdom.”

James Clavell

“What are clouds, but an excuse for the sky? What is life, but an escape from death?”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Yabu-san's death poem after being ordered to commit seppuku.
Shōgun (1975)

“And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.”

James Clavell book King Rat

Source: King Rat

“First the priests arrive. Then the conquistadores.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

“What can I do to help thee?" he asked.
"Believe there is a tomorrow.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

“There is no dignity for either the sufferer or the torturer”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shogun

“Isn't man but a blossom taken by wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this land of the gods everlasting?”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

“Love is a Christian word, Anjin-san. Love is a Christian thought, a Christian ideal. We have no word for 'love' as I understand you to mean it. Duty, loyalty, honor, respect, desire, those words and thoughts are what we have, all that we need.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

“Guard yourself and your conscience no one else will and know that a bad decision at the right time can destroy you far more surely than any bullet!”

James Clavell book King Rat

Source: King Rat

“We have a saying that time has no single measure, that time can be like frost or lightning or a tear or siege or storm or sunset, or even like a rock.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

“You must be patient before you criticize.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Shogun, Part 1

“Your daddy had to go back to school a little. He had some strange thoughts — and he wanted other grown-ups to believe them. It's not right for others to believe wrong thoughts, is it?”

James Clavell book The Children's Story

"Teacher" to Johnny
The Children's Story (1982)

“God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.”

James Clavell

André Delambre
The Fly (1958)

“I'm going to work hard not to have any wrong thoughts!”

James Clavell book The Children's Story

Child
The Children's Story (1982)

“Changi for me — of course it's easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event — was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.”

James Clavell

On his experience as a POW in Changi Prison on Singapore, which became the subject of his novel King Rat
Interview with Don Swaim (1986)

“The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.”

James Clavell

André Delambre
The Fly (1958)

“So much wealth and so much power, Armstrong thought, yet with a little luck, we can bring you down like Humpty-Dumpty…”

James Clavell book Noble House

Noble House (1981)

“I'm going to pray to our leader every time!”

James Clavell book The Children's Story

Child
The Children's Story (1982)

“All his life he had heard legends told among pilots and sailormen about the incredible riches of Portugal's secret empire in the East, how they had by now converted the heathens to Catholicism and so held them in bondage, where gold was as cheap as pig iron, and emeralds, rubies, diamonds, and sapphires as plentiful as pebbles on a beach.
If the Catholic part's true, he told himself, perhaps the rest is too.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun (1975), Ch. 1