William Manchester · 992 pages
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“It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“There was, however, a difference between his mood and that of the rest of the cabinet. They felt desperate; he felt challenged.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“Today's Europeans and Americans who reached the age of awareness after midcentury when the communications revolution lead to expectations of instantanaiy are exasperated by the slow toils of history. They assume that the thunderclap of cause will be swiftly followed by the lightening bolt of effect.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it… the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts…. It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary; it fulfils the same function as pain in the human body, it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“GBS wired Winston: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Churchill wired back: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”61”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“The key to successful extramarital sex, therefore, was discretion. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, perhaps the most outspoken woman in polite society, said dryly: “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom, as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”43”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“Byron wrote his shortest and most eloquent poem as a testament to a titled woman who had taken leave of her husband for a nine-month romp with him: Caroline Lamb, Goddamn.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“I like to live in the past. I don't think people are going to get much fun in the future”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“the essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“read three or four books at a time to avoid tedium”—and”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“In the nineteenth century,” he observed, “Jules Verne wrote Round the World in Eighty Days. It seemed a prodigy. Now you can get around it in four, but you do not see much of it on the way.”
― William Manchester, quote from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
“A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with 'Got To Get You Off My Mind', but then realised that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straight away, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs, and ... oh there are loads of rules.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from High Fidelity
“Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important thing that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them- "ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.”
― Chaim Potok, quote from The Chosen
“With the infinite patience of one who has learned to live broken, he awaited her return.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Daughter of Smoke & Bone
“I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”
― Albert Camus, quote from The Plague
“Once you want something, everything changes. Now I want everything. More and more and more.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Matched
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