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Falling to pieces Quote by Paul Scott

““a repository sounds like a place for storing furniture when you bash off to some other station. I suppose an Englishman could say that the whole of India is that sort of place. You all went, but left so much behind that you couldn’t carry with you wherever you were going, and these days those of you who come back can more often than not hardly bother to think about it, let alone ask for the key to go in and root about among all the old dust sheets to see that everything worthwhile that you left is still there and isn’t falling to pieces with dry rot.””

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Falling to pieces

More by Paul Scott

“She had devoted her life, in a practical and unimportant way, trying to prove that fear was evil because it promoted prejudice, that courage was good because it was a sign of selflessness, that ignorance was bad because fear sprang from it, that knowledge was good because the more you knew of the world’s complexity the more clearly you saw…

“Unfortunately, there is always an unmapped area of dangerous fallibility between a policy and its pursuit.”

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“riot squads were ready to go into action. Although these young English boys (many of them civilians themselves little more than a year ago,…

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“There are images that stay vividly in your mind, even after many years: images coupled with the feeling that at the same time came…

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“There’s a difference between trying to stop an injustice and obstructing justice.”

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“She did not divide conduct into parts. She was attempting always a wholeness. When there is wholeness there are no causes. Only there is…

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English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.

“I had that sensation which sometimes comes to us all, of returning to a situation that had already been resolved on some previous occasion,…

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“But it is not these things which most impress the stranger on his journey into the civil lines, into the old city itself (where he becomes lost and notes the passage of a woman dressed in the burkha in the street of the moneylenders) and then back past the secretariat, the Legislative Assembly and Government House, and on into the…

“wily minds and cold hearts were the combination Bronowsky found most common in English administrators.”

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“Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake…

“There is too much emotion in our own public life. The English could never be accused of that. They lock us up, release us and lock us up again according to what suits them at the time, with a bland detachment that, fortunately or unfortunately, is matched by an equally bland acceptance on our part. They act collectively, and so…

Explore all 80 Paul Scott quotes

More Falling to pieces quotes

“My longtime broken heart was breaking again, shattering, falling to pieces and disintegrating. And in its place was a brand new heart. Like a…

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“...Something I had seen as slid–not perfect, but solid–was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it.”

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“I can now see everything falling to pieces before my eyes.”

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“The novel belongs to our parents, I thought then, I think now. That's what we grew up believing, that the novel belonged to our parents. We cursed them, and also took refuge in their shadows, relieved. While the adults killed or were killed, we drew pictures in a corner. While the country was falling to pieces, we were learning to…

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“You can't cure people of their character,' she read. After this he had crossed something out then gone on, 'You can't even change yourself. Experiments in that direction soon deteriorate into bitter, infuriated struggles. You haul yourself over the wall and glimpse new country. Good! You can never again be what you were! But even as you are congratulating yourself…

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Out of the west came Lincoln, and all that he had he gave to the preservation of the Union that had been bought so…

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“What's going on? Not much. My mother's falling to pieces, my sister is a selfish bitch and my father's committing slow suicide for sake…

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“His chest, heaving harder this time. His words, almost gasping this time. “You destroy me.” I am falling to pieces in his arms. My fists are full of unlucky pennies and my heart is a jukebox demanding a few nickels and my head is flipping quarters heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails “Juliette,” he…

When the world around you is falling to pieces. Invite yourself into a new world that you have invented and can't be touched.

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The worst thing about falling to pieces is that humans can do it so quietly.

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People think edges are bad, but they are really there to keep up from falling to pieces. They don't hold us back, they hold…

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