13 Quotes by J. G. Farrell

War is only a passing phase in business life...If you want my opinion there's nothing like a spot of patriotism for blinding people to reality.

Why on earth should we be at each other’s throats? Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?

A great deal of thought must be given to your daughter’s marriage. Otherwise, she will simply slink off like a cat on a dark night to be fertilized under a bush to God knows whom!

The British could leave and half India wouldn’t notice us leaving just as they didn’t notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them...

At the same time he realized with a shock how much his own faith in the Church’s authority, or in the Christian view of the world in which he had hitherto lived his life, had diminished since he had last inspected them. From the farmyard in which his certitudes perched like fat chickens, every night of the siege, one or two were carried off in the jaws of rationalism and despair. Another.

He glanced at her, musing on the wonder of a beautiful woman with a disagreeable personality.

The Magistrate suffered from the disability of a free-thinking turn of mind and from a life that was barren and dreary to match.

Culture is a sham,’ he said simply. ‘It’s a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness.’ Fleury.

War is only a passing phase in business life... If you want my opinion there’s nothing like a spot of patriotism for blinding people to reality.