Top 160 James Clavell Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life – Shogun.”

— James Clavell

2. “All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they’re any good, the ending is a beginning.”

— James Clavell

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

3. “The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world, and the most dangerous.”

— James Clavell

4. “Patience means restraining yourself. There are seven emotions, Joy, anger, anxiety, adoration, grief, fear, and hate. If a man doesn’t give way to these, he’s patient. I’m not as strong as I might be but I’m patient.”

— James Clavell

Featured in: Strong Quotes

5. “To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline and training is all about.”

— James Clavell

6. “The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.”

— James Clavell

7. “What are clouds, but an excuse for the sky? What is life, but an escape from death?”

— James Clavell

8. “Guard yourself and your conscience no one else will and know that a bad decision at the right time can destroy you far more surely than any bullet!”

— James Clavell

9. “There is no dignity for either the sufferer or the torturer.”

— James Clavell

10. “How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”

— James Clavell

11. “If you smile when you lose, then you win in life.”

— James Clavell

12. “A man’s fate is a man’s fate and life is but an illusion.”

— James Clavell

13. “Love is a Christian word, Anjin-san. Love is a Christian thought, a Christian ideal. We have no word for ‘love’ as I understand you to mean it. Duty, loyalty, honor, respect, desire, those words and thoughts are what we have, all that we need.”

— James Clavell

14. “Listen, if you want peace you must learn to drink cha from an empty cup.”

— James Clavell

15. “Christ, it’s so good to be alive.”

— James Clavell

16. “Kill, torture, burn! Just so long as it’s in the name of God, you’re all right. What a lot of hypocrisy! Don’t give me faith! It’s nothing!”

— James Clavell

17. “And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.”

— James Clavell

18. “It’s a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.”

— James Clavell

19. “Money means nothing to a real man.”

— James Clavell

20. “This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.”

— James Clavell

21. “God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.”

— James Clavell

22. “Karma is the beginning of knowledge. Next is patience. Patience is very important. The strong are the patient ones, Anjin-san. patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don’t give way to the seven, you’re patient, then you’ll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.”

— James Clavell

23. “Always remember, child,’ her first teacher had impressed on her, ’that to think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort.”

— James Clavell

24. “In war and in peace, a good enemy can be more valuable than a good ally.”

— James Clavell

25. “Why is it there is always such violence between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? Doesn’t daughter-in-law, in time, become mother-in-law? Why does she then always treat her own daughter-in-law to a lashing tongue and make her life a misery, and why does that girl do the same in her turn? Doesn’t anyone learn?”

— James Clavell

26. “His eyes Were just the end Of Hell – All pain, Articulate.”

— James Clavell

27. “What you do with strangers is ignore them for. No second chance, no sorry I did it, never accept an apology, but never, ever get angry with strangers.”

— James Clavell

28. “The earth’s round, like an orange, but this map is like its skin, cut off in ovals, north to south, laid flat and stretched a bit at the top and bottom. A Dutchman called Mercator invented the way to do this accurately twenty years ago. It’s the first accurate world map.”

— James Clavell

29. “All gods bear witness! The Jade Gate and the One-Eyed Monk are truly yin and yang, truly everlasting, truly godlike, both insatiable however much one consumes the other.”

— James Clavell

30. “Ronin were landless or masterless peasant-soldiers or samurai who, through dishonor or the loss of their masters, were forced to wander the land until some other lord would accept their services.”

— James Clavell

31. “Kogo, the goshawk, fluttered on his wrist and settled herself, watching him. Toranaga smiled at her. I did not choose to be what I am. It is my karma.”

— James Clavell

32. “Isn’t man but a blossom taken by wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this land of the gods everlasting?”

— James Clavell

33. “The scarcity of years does not necessitate lack of wisdom.”

— James Clavell

34. “Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don’t give way to the seven, you’re patient, then you’ll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.”

— James Clavell

35. “It is sometimes wise to be abstract.”

— James Clavell

36. “Anger is something you should only vent in front of intimates, and friends and relations. Never be angry in front of strangers because you lose face.”

— James Clavell

37. “It’s always important to take time to study men – important men. Friends and enemies.”

— James Clavell

38. “They put me with a blind monk who taught me how to massage and to see again with my fingers. Now my fingers tell me more than my eyes used to, I think.”

— James Clavell

39. “Changi for me – of course it’s easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event – was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.”

— James Clavell

40. “But they’re as Communist as Russia. They went to war against us when we were only trying to protect freedom in South Korea. We weren’t going to attack them.”

— James Clavell

41. “Anger is one of the most intimate of emotions and to expose it to strangers is one of the most stupid and sickening things to do. Never get angry with strangers because they are strangers.”

— James Clavell

42. “You must learn to control the filth of your tongue, my son. It will send you to hell.”

— James Clavell

43. “Beyond the castle walls, the city lay in almost total darkness. Above, the moon was pallid and misted. It was a brooding, darkling night. And, it seemed to him, doom walked the heavens.”

— James Clavell

44. “Lend a little and you have a debtor – lend a lot and you have a partner!”

— James Clavell

45. “Without privacy, civilized life could not exist.”

— James Clavell

46. “Only merchants have money to waste, and what are they but parasites who create nothing, grow nothing, make nothing but feed off another’s labor?”

— James Clavell

47. “It’s only Christian to be chivalrous to your enemies.”

— James Clavell

48. “Death and life are the same thing. This is the immutable law of nature.”

— James Clavell

49. “Of what real value is a title? The power is the only important thing.”

— James Clavell

50. “It is not wise to notice another man’s woman.”

— James Clavell