P.D. James Quotes

To succeed in business, put the interest of the customer ahead of your own.

We've focused a lot on visible evidence. We believe that a community needs to make the visible statement about who the community is.

I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.

This is a hard fight and we had better all die than lose it.

The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs.

Our union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war.

Ten years before its time, a fashion is indecent; ten years after, it is hideous; but a century after, it is romantic.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

Never give up listening to the sounds of birds.

Our hope will never be found in the efforts of man, but in Jesus Christ alone.

I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Sometimes the king is a woman.

The decline and fall of a civilization is barely noticed by most of its citizens.

The final heartbeat for the Christian is not the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless existence. It is, rather, the grand beginning to a life that will never end.

There seems to be a lot of excitement around something that, to me, is a yawn, frankly.

It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.

I just...feel like I need to save everyone. To redeem myself.

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

If you are not their slaves, you are rebels.

The gratitude ... should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy.

Don't look back, because that's the sign of failure.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

I tried to see that every picture was better-looking than the person.

It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.

Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.

Music is about listening, the more you play, the more the magic spreads.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.

I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.

Life is too long to reject the opportunities in front of you every day.

Don't lean on your own understanding. If your trust in God is limited by your understanding of His ways, you will always have a limited trust.

Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.

There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.

Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?

What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

An API that isn't comprehensible isn't usable.

When people start copying your style, you know that something must be happening.

Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.