James Salter Quotes

You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching. You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?

The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.

You ask if you look good and you know people are lying. It was a depressing thing to experience. I was going to these parties where I used to be ignored and then all of a sudden people are paying attention to me.

His passions make man live, his wisdom merely makes him last.

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.

The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.

Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everything else we love-everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires'-it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run.

The need to impress others causes half the world's woes.

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

(Acting) certainly comes-100 percent-from the need to be loved. Any actor who says this isn't true is lying.

What is man but his passion?

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.

Men never desire anything very eagerly which they desire only by the dictates of reason.

And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.

I wasn't always smart, I was actually very stupid in school [T]here was a boy who was very attractive who was even stupider than I was. And in order to ingratiate myself with this boy who was very beautiful, I began to do his homework for him – and that's how I became smart, I had to do all this work to just keep ahead of him a little bit, in order to help him. In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys.

Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength --or else we die.

Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart.

It is a law of life that human beings, even the geniuses among them, do not pride themselves on their actual achievements but thatthey want to impress others, want to be admired and respected because of things of much lower import and value.

Passion... it lies in all of us. Sleeping, waiting, and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir, open its jaws, and howl. It speaks to us, guides us... passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?

Only passions can raise a man above the level of the animal.

Sex is the root of which intuition is the foliage and beauty is the flower.

The hero is the world-man, in whose heart One passion stands for all, the most indulged.