James Salter Quotes

Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.

People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

I'll keep peace at all cost, even if I choke to death on my tongue.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Emotion is always the enemy of wise statesmanship.

Never exaggerate, but express your feelings with moderation.

During crazy times, I just hold back. People are so quick to jump on something or rip it apart.

I am not the sort of character to get carried away.

I'm not a 'more is better' guy.

We've led pretty wholesome lives. We haven't lived life to excess like so many groups have done.

It is certainly much easier wholly to decline a passion than to keep it within just bounds and measures; and that which few can moderate almost anybody may prevent.

She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say, I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: "I think I'm going to marry Alfred.

Desire urges me on, while fear bridals me.

O love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy, In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess!

You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.

For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide -- laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course -- it was striving against the stream.

Without asceticism, self-indulgence would be insignificant.

For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himselfand others. He doesn't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

I cannot, nor I will not hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.

The wise man is he who knows when and how to stop