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
Topics: Charm
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.
—P. D. James
Topics: Nature
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
—P. D. James
There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
—P. D. James
Topics: Science, Scientists
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
—P. D. James
Topics: Literature, Books
We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
—P. D. James
Topics: Obligation
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
—P. D. James
Topics: Memory
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
J. K. Rowling English Novelist
Doris Lessing British Novelist, Poet
Agatha Christie British Novelist
Beryl Bainbridge British Novelist
Mary Elizabeth Braddon English Novelist
Margaret Thatcher British Head of State
Arnold Bennett British Novelist
H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian
Israel Zangwill English Writer, Political Activist