Quotes from The Towers of Silence

Paul Scott ·  399 pages

Rating: (1K votes)


“The calendar was a mathematical progression with arbitrary surprises.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


“Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


“As children we accept magic as a normal part of life. Everything seems rooted in it, everything conspires in magic terms.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


“Walls, windows, roof, verandah–entirely commonplace, mean even–moved her with the austere poetry of their function. Here a man sheltered from and diminished the horror and vulgarity of the world by the simplicity of his arrangements for living in it.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


“the one thing to which the human spirit could always accommodate itself was chaos and misfortune.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence



“The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society, or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Everything tends in a most wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit at home with might and main, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the governments of the world . . .”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


“When he got to the shoe putting-on stage he called Hosain again. Putting on and taking off his own shoes and boots were activities at which he drew the line if there was a man available to perform these services. He had learned to draw the line in Muzzafirabad where his first CO, Colonel Gawstone, advised him never to stoop if he could help it. The climate wasn't right for it. Mrs. Gawstone had stooped to pick up a glove and keeled right over and never got up. They had buried her the next day.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Towers of Silence


About the author

Paul Scott
Born place: in Southgate, London, The United Kingdom
Born date March 25, 1920
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