Mirrlees K Quotes & Sayings

each variety of humor is a sort of totem, making at once for unity and separation. Its votaries it unites into a closely-knit brotherhood, but it separates them sharply off from all the rest of the world. — Hope Mirrlees

Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book ... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: We (and then we say our own names), Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, and that we will not be wiser than the foolish nor more cunning than the simple, and that we will remember that he who rides the Wind needs must go where his Steed carries him. — Hope Mirrlees

The world's been pretty good at coming up with new ways of doing things. — James Mirrlees

A relationship that has become artificial, and connected, on one side, with a sense of duty rather than with spontaneous affection, is always an uncomfortable one. — Hope Mirrlees

There is not a single homely thing that, looked at from a certain angle, does not become fairy. — Hope Mirrlees

Encourage your own curiosity; pursue the problems based on that. Don't get diverted by trying to do things for your own advancement. In other words, don't be lured into responding to incentives. — James Mirrlees

Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive. — Hope Mirrlees

There's no more foolish proverb than the one which says that dead men tell no tales. To help dead men to find their tongues is one of the chief uses of the Law. — Hope Mirrlees

I think, in effect, in most of the European countries, the total marginal tax rate is over 50 percent; that's to say, add on other taxes like VAT to the income tax. — James Mirrlees

Why is Melancholy like Honey? Because it is very sweet, and it is culled from Flowers. — Hope Mirrlees

Besides, there was that foolish feeling of his that reality was not solid, and that facts were only plastic toys; or, rather, that they were poisonous plants, which you need not pluck unless you choose. And, even if you do pluck them, you can always fling them from you and leave them to wither on the ground. He — Hope Mirrlees

He says to me, Ranulph, he says ... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past is made of the present, and that the present is always here. — Hope Mirrlees

Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief. — Hope Mirrlees

A bad conscience makes a very good ghost. — Hope Mirrlees

Let a thing be but a sort of punctual surprise, like the first cache of violets in March, let it be delicate, painted and gratuitous, hinting that the Creator is solely occupied with aesthetic considerations, and combines disparate objects simply because they look so well together, and that thing will admirably fill the role of a flower. — Hope Mirrlees

And there were ruined castles covered with ivy - the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets. — Hope Mirrlees

A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted. — Hope Mirrlees

Poetry and visions, springing as they do from an ever-present sense of mortality, might easily appear morbid to the sturdy
common sense of a burgher-class in the making. — Hope Mirrlees

Sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the slightest influence on action. — Hope Mirrlees

Was it possible that Ranulph, too, was a real person, a person inside whose mind things happened? He had thought that he himself was the only real person in a field of human flowers. For Master Nathaniel that was a moment of surprise, triumph, tenderness, alarm. — Hope Mirrlees

And the man who remains calm inevitably takes command of a situation. — Hope Mirrlees

All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider's web, and how little lemon-colored buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts - they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves — Hope Mirrlees

So fine a medicine is the will to action. — Hope Mirrlees

But it is best to let sleeping facts lie. — Hope Mirrlees

It became clear I wanted to be a development economist. I mean, I said I wanted to work on the economics of poor countries. And I'd actually say that I don't think that was so much about narrowing the gap as about increasing their incomes, which means economic growth, which is really my prime interest. — James Mirrlees

His own way to a sick man is what grass is to a sick dog. — Hope Mirrlees

You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with ever modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your own face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candlelight, when all the house is still. — Hope Mirrlees

The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth - a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows — Hope Mirrlees

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

It was as if the future were a treacly adhesive fluid that had been spilt all over the present, so that everything he touched made his fingers too sticky to be of the slightest use. — Hope Mirrlees