I decided to read this after seeing it quoted in The Geography of Bliss. I haven't seen the movie, but i remember both my parents talking about that. It was certainly important to them and many people in their generation. It is a beautiful book, possibly the model for many Star Trek episodes and many other books that came after it.
Quotes:
Conway found himself quite unable to restrain an admiring glance at Miss Brinklow. She was not, he reflected, a normal person, no woman who taught Afghans to sing hymns could be considered so. But she was, after every calamity, still normally abnormal, and he was deeply obliged to her for it.
And as for the war, if you'd been in it you'd have done the same as I did, learned how to funk with a stiff lip."
Chang answered rather slowly and in scarcely more than a whisper: "If I were to put it into a very few words, my dear sir, I should say that our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excess of all kinds--even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself.
I can only add that our community has various faiths and usages, but we are most of us moderately heretical about them.
"The jewel has facets," said the Chinese, "and it is possible that many religions are moderately true."
His attitude may be summed up by saying that, as he had not died at a normal age, he began to feel that there was no discoverable reason why he either should or should not do so at any definite time in the future.
"Yet it is, nevertheless, a prospect of much charm that I unfold for you--long tranquillities during which you will observe a sunset as men in the outer world hear the striking of a clock, and with far less care. The years will come and go, and you will pass from fleshly enjoyments into austerer but no less satisfying realms; you may lose the keenness of muscle and appetite, but there will be gain to match your loss; you will achieve calmness and profundity, ripeness and wisdom, and the clear enchantment of memory. And, most precious of all, you will have Time--that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it.
"Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue,"
There came a time, he realized, when the strangeness of everything made it increasingly difficult to realize the strangeness of anything; when one took things for granted merely because astonishment would have been as tedious for oneself as for others.
"It is significant," he said after a pause, "that the English regard slackness as a vice. We, on the other hand, should vastly prefer it to tension. Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers?"
Although we have no bigotry on the point, it is our custom at Shangri-La to be moderately truthful, and I can assure you that my statements about the porters were almost correct.
We are a single lifeboat riding the seas in a gale; we can take a few chance survivors, but if all the shipwrecked were to reach us and clamber aboard we should go down ourselves. . . .
I suppose the truth is that when it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive."
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