Descriptive quotes from Lost Horizon

Lost Horizon by James Hilton is a novel about four travelers who are hijacked from a remote airport and flown over the Himalayan mountains in Tibet.  When their plane crashes, they are rescued by Tibetans lamas-in-training from a nearby lamastery.  What the travelers learn and experience at the secluded sacred retreat will change them forever (no spoilers here!).

The book is fairly short, and is a quick read.  Lost Horizon was written in the 1930s.

Descriptive Analogies

I found myself highlighting several interesting descriptions in the Lost Horizons.

"It would be like trying to sell an epic poem to Tit-Bits," a magazine dedicated to tidbits - brief articles - from other media sources from 1881 to 1984.

"You were left with one good story to tell for the rest of your life."

... "with an air of having been compelled to attend a party at which there were goings-on that she could not wholly approve."

"I wouldn't care if it's Tibet or Tennessee."

"It's effect might not be tranquilizing."

"The night dragged on, as if each minute were something heavy and tangible that had to be pushed to make way for the next."

"One is fortunate if, as on this occasion, a touch of novelty seasons the unpleasantness."

"One of its features, for instance, was a very delightful library, lofty and spacious, and containing a multitude of books so retiringly housed in bays and alcoves that the whole atmosphere was more of wisdom than of learning."

"There came a time, he realized, when the strangeness of everything made it increasingly difficult to realize the strangeness of anything."

... "only a fragrance whose melancholy we may enjoy."

"Urgency did not clamor nor postponement disappoint."

"He did not know whether he had been mad and was now sane, or had been sane for a time and was now mad again."