Daily Inspiration Quote by P. D. James

A perfectly barbed bit of national self-portraiture: forgiveness here isn’t virtue, it’s strategy. P. D. James frames “We English” as a collective character in one of her own novels - polite, restrained, faintly amused by its own moral theater. The first clause sounds like a compliment, the kind a country tells itself in commemorations and newspaper columns. The second clause flips it into something colder and funnier: forgiving enemies becomes a way to duck the messier labor of intimacy.

The line works because it treats friendship as an obligation, not a pleasure. “Liking our friends” is almost deliberately small, domestic language - not “loving” or “standing by,” but liking, as if even mild affection feels like a social demand that must be managed. James is after the emotional economics of a culture that prizes composure: enmity can be sanitized with magnanimity, neatly packaged as moral superiority. Friendship, by contrast, requires exposure, loyalty, and the risky business of choosing sides. If you forgive an enemy, you get to perform grace without having to deal with the petty grievances, disappointments, and compromises that come with people close to you.

As a crime novelist, James also understands how “forgiveness” can function as misdirection. It’s a social alibi: a way to look generous while avoiding accountability to anyone who might actually know you. The subtext is less about England than about how civility can mask avoidance - and how the hardest relationships aren’t the adversarial ones, but the familiar ones you can’t elegantly escape.