# Quote — Lawrence Durrell, Mountolive

> here was Kenilworth now heading the new department concerned with Personnel [-] one of those blank administrative constructs which offered no openings into the world of policy. A dead end. [-] he would soon develop the negative powers of obstruction which always derive from a sense of failure. (IV)

- Author: [Lawrence Durrell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-durrell.md)
- Book: [Mountolive](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-durrell/mountolive.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lawrence_Durrell#Mountolive_(1958)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-durrell/mountolive/here-was-kenilworth

## More from this book

> Lovers can find nothing to say to each other that has not been said and unsaid a thousand times over. Kisses were invented to translate such nothings into wounds (I)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-durrell/mountolive/lovers-can-find.md)

> In French the truth of passion stood up coldly and cruelly to the scrutiny of human experience. In his own curious phrase he [Pursewarden] had always qualified it as 'an unsniggerable language'. (VIII)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-durrell/mountolive/in-french-the.md)

> His profession [ diplomacy ] — offered him something like a long Jesuitical training in self-deception which enabled him to present an ever more highly polished surface to the world without deepening his human experience [-] for he lived surrounded by his ambitious and sycophantic fellows who taught him only how to excel in forms of address, and the elaborate kindnesses which, in pleasing, pave the way to advancement. (II)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lawrence-durrell/mountolive/his-profession-diplomacy.md)