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But nowadays -- Our weakness for the last few years has been the ineffectiveness of the Opposition. This Labour Party has never had the quality of a fighting Opposition. It has just sucked the life out of Radicalism. It has never had the definite idealism of the Whigs and Liberals. 'Give us more employment and slightly higher pay and be sure of our contentment,' says Labour. 'We're loyal. We know our place. But we don't like being unemployed.' What good is that as Opposition? It's about as much opposition as a mewing cat. We mean more than that. I tell you frankly. Our task, I take it, my task, is to reinstate that practical working Opposition which has always been Old England's alternative line of defence... For the good of all of us... By H.g.wells Opposition Labour Nowadays Weakness Years

Their bodies lay flatly on the rocks, and their eyes regarded him with evil interest: but it does not appear that Mr. Fison was afraid, or that he realized that he was in any danger. Possibly his confidence is to be ascribed to the limpness of their attitudes. But he was horrified, of course, and intensely excited and indignant at such revolting creatures preying upon human flesh. He thought they had chanced upon a drowned body. He shouted to them, with the idea of driving them off, and, finding they did not budge, cast about him, picked up a big rounded lump of rock, and flung it at one.And then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving towards him - creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring sound to each other. By H.g.wells Fison Interest Afraid Danger Bodies

I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. By H.g.wells Flirtation Future Carry Miniature

He went into those little gardens beneath the over-hanging, brightly-lit masses of the Savoy Hotel and the Hotel Cecil. He sat down on a seat and became aware of the talk of the two people next to him. It was the talk of a young couple evidently on the eve of marriage. The man was congratulating himself on having regular employment at last; 'they like me,' he said, 'and I like the job. If I work up - in'r dozen years or so I ought to be gettin' somethin' pretty comfortable. That's the plain sense of it, Hetty. There ain't no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't get along very decently - very decently indeed. By H.g.wells Hotel Cecil Savoy Overhanging Brightlylit

We have taken Herodotus as an interesting specimen of what we have called the free intelligence of mankind. Now here we are dealing with a similar overflow of moral ideas into the general community. The Hebrew prophets, and the steady expansion of their ideas towards one God in all the world, is a parallel development of the free conscience of mankind. From this time onward there runs through human thought, now weakly and obscurely, now gathering power, the idea of one rule in the world, and of a promise and possibility of an active and splendid peace and happiness in human affairs. From being a temple religion of the old type, the Jewish religion becomes, to a large extent, a prophetic and creative religion of a new type. Prophet succeeds prophet. By H.g.wells Herodotus Mankind Free Religion World

Sooner or later it must come out, even if other men rediscover it. And then ... Governments and powers will struggle to get hither, they will fight against one another and against these moon people. It will only spread warfare and multiply the occasions of war. In a little while, in a very little while if I tell my secret, this planet to it's deepest galleries will be strewn with human dead. Other things are doubtful, but this is certain ... It is not as though man had any use for the moon. What good would the moon be to men? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battleground and theatre of infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life down there far more than he can do. No! Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand. Let him find it out for himself again-in a thousand years' time. By H.g.wells Sooner Moon Rediscover Time Men

What good would the moon be to men? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battleground and theatre of infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life down there far more than he can do. By H.g.wells Men Good Moon Folly Small

The weaving of mankind into one community does not imply the creation of a homogeneous community, but rather the reverse; the welcome and adequate utilization of distinctive quality in an atmosphere of understanding ... Communities all to one pattern, like boxes of toy soldiers, are things of the past, rather than of the future. By H.g.wells Community Reverse Understanding Weaving Mankind

It is well to understand how empty space is. If, as we have said, the sun were a ball nine feet across, our earth would, in proportion, be the size of a one-inch ball, and at a distance of 323 yards from the sun. The moon would be a speck the size of a small pea, thirty inches from the earth. Nearer to the sun than the earth would be two other very similar specks, the planets Mercury and Venus, at a distance of 125 and 250 yards respectively. Beyond the earth would come the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, at distances of 500, 1806, 3000, 6000, and 9500 yards respectively. By H.g.wells Earth Yards Sun Size Distance

Most of the social and political ills from which you suffer are under your control, given only the will and courage to change them. You can live in another and a wiser fashion if you choose to think it out and work it out. You are not awake to your own power. By H.g.wells Control Social Political Ills Suffer

A certain elementary training in statistical method is becoming as necessary for everyone living in this world of today as reading and writing. By H.g.wells Writing Elementary Training Statistical Method

Public men in America are too public. Too accessible. This sitting on the stoop and being 'just folk' was all very well for local politics and the simple farmer days of a hundred years ago, but it's no good for world affairs. Opening flower-shows and being genial to babies and all that is out of date. These parish politics methods have to go. The ultimate leader ought to be distant, audible but far off. Show yourself and then vanish into a cloud. Marx would never have counted for one tenth of his weight as 'Charlie Marx' playing chess with the boys, and Woodrow Wilson threw away all his magic as far as Europe was concerned when he crossed the Atlantic. Before he crossed he was a god -- what a god he was! After he arrived he was just a grinning guest. I've got to be the Common Man, yes, but not common like that. By H.g.wells America Public Men Marx Politics

This sense of insecurity was falling about the entire planet and though people went on doing the things they usually did, they had none of the assurance, the happy-go-lucky "all-right" feeling, that had hitherto sustained normal men. They went on doing their customary things because they could not think of anything else to do. They tried to believe, and many did succeed in believing, that there would presently be a turn for the better. They did nothing to bring about that turn for the better; they just hoped it would occur. By H.g.wells Allright Feeling Things Assurance Men

I tell you, stupidity, self-protective stupidity, is the fundamental sin. No man alive has a right to contentment. No man alive has a right to mental rest. No man has any right to be as stupid as educated, Liberal men have been about that foolish affair at Geneva. Men who have any leisure, any gifts, any resources, have no right to stifle their consciences with that degree of imposture. By H.g.wells Stupidity Man Selfprotective Sin Alive

The essential question was always "Who are these fellows who give us orders? By what warrant? And how do we benefit and how does the world benefit? But they are doing no good to anyone, no real good even to themselves! This is not government and leadership; this is imposture. Why stand it?...Why stand it? By H.g.wells Orders Essential Question Fellows Give

It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war. By H.g.wells Reason Fleeing War Love Madness

The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. By H.g.wells Blue Sky Longer Red Indian

Like a committee in a thieves' kitchen when someone has casually mentioned the law. By H.g.wells Law Committee Thieves Kitchen Casually

It's my opinion he don't want to kill you,' said Perea - 'at least not yet. I've heard deir idea is to scar and worry a man wid deir spells, and narrow misses, and rheumatic pains, and bad dreams, and all dat, until he's sick of life. Of course, it's all talk, you know. You mustn't worry about it. But I wunder what he'll be up to next.''I shall have to be up to something first,' said Pollock, staring gloomily at the greasy cards that Perea was putting on the table. 'It don't suit my dignity to be followed about, and shot at, and blighted in this way. I wonder if Porroh hokey-pokey upsets your luck at cards.'He looked at Perea suspiciously.'Very likely it does,' said Perea warmly, shuffling. 'Dey are wonderful people.'("Pollock And The Porrah Man") By H.g.wells Perea Opinion Kill Pollock Deir

You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but-the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do. By H.g.wells War Great Wars Play Times

And in friendship and still more here, in this central business of love, accident rules it seems to me almost altogether. What personalities you will encounter in life, and have for a chief interest in life, is nearly as much a matter of chance as the drift of a grain of pollen in the pine forest. And once the light hazard has blown it has blown, never to drive again. By H.g.wells Life Love Accident Altogether Friendship

It is good to stop by the track for a space, put aside the knapsack, wipe the brows, and talk a little of the upper slopes of the mountain we think we are climbing, would but the trees let us see it. By H.g.wells Space Put Knapsack Wipe Brows

He showed it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been living too much alone. This seclusion was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to be the recipient. By H.g.wells Showed Confiding Zest Man Living

We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries. By H.g.wells Century Universities Suggest Education Graduation

An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house for the mind: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared By H.g.wells Knowledge Today Age Unorganized Immense

We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence. By H.g.wells Challenges Grow Strive Change Eloi

He came away with an exasperated sense of failure. He denounced parliamentary government root and branch that night. Parliament was doomed. The fact that it had not listened to Rud was only one little conclusive fact in a long indictment. "It has become a series of empty forms," he said. "All over the world, always, the sawdust of reality is running out of the shapes of quasi-public things. Not one British citizen in a thousand watches what is done in Parliament; not one in a thousand Americans follows the discourses of Congress. Interest has gone. Every election in the past thirty years has been fought on gross misunderstandings. By H.g.wells Failure Exasperated Sense Parliament Fact

Without world unification the species would destroy itself by the enlarged powers that had come to it. This, said the men of science, is no theory, no political alternative; it is a statement of fact. Men had to pool their political, economic and educational lives. There was no other way for them but a series of degenerative phases leading very plainly to extinction. They could not revert now. They had to go on - up or down. They had gone too far with civilisation and in societies, to sink back into a merely "animal" life again. The hold of the primates on life had always been a precarious one. Except where they were under human protection all the other great apes were extinct. Now plainly man had to go on to a larger life, a planetary existence, or perish in his turn. By H.g.wells World Unification Species Destroy Enlarged

Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing. By H.g.wells Threedimensional Thing Representations Fourdimensioned Fixed

That afternoon, with a sense of infinite relief, Pollock watched the flat swampy foreshore of Sulyma grow small in the distance. The gap in the long line of white surge became narrower and narrower. It seemed to be closing in and cutting him off from his trouble. The feeling of dread and worry began to slip from him bit by bit. At Sulyma belief in Porroh malignity and Porroh magic had been in the air, his sense of Porroh had been vast, pervading, threatening, dreadful. Now manifestly the domain of Porroh was only a little place, a little black band between the lea and the blue cloudy Mendi uplands.("Pollock And The Porroh Man") By H.g.wells Porroh Pollock Sulyma Afternoon Relief

The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over. By H.g.wells Apace East Number Darkness Grew

Why had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go. By H.g.wells Moon Thing Man Happiness Problem

What is this spirit in man that urges him forever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, even to risk a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me up there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made simply to go about being safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. Against his interest, against his happiness he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him and go he must. By H.g.wells Man Security Toil Danger Death

It came to me then, I am sure, for the first time, how promiscuous, how higgledy-piggledy was the whole of that jumble of mines and homes, collieries and potbanks, railway yards, canals, schools, forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotment hovels, a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which men lived as happy as frogs in a dustbin. Each thing jostled and damaged the other things about it, each thing ignored the other things about it; the smoke of the furnace defiled the potbank clay, the clatter of the railway deafened the worshipers in church, the public-house thrust corruption at the school doors, the dismal homes squeezed miserably amidst the monstrosities of industrialism, with an effect of groping imbecility. Humanity choked amidst its products, and all its energy went in increasing its disorder, like a blind stricken thing that struggles and sinks in a morass. By H.g.wells Thing Homes Railway Canals Churches

If I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence; I become absent minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of time any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should we not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time Dimension; or even to turn about and travel the other way? By H.g.wells Back Occurrence Minded Recalling Incident

That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way? By H.g.wells Time Discovery Back Germ Great

What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young. By H.g.wells Errors Vigour Conditions Biological Science

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end. By H.g.wells Man Vanity Writer Century Expressed

The queer thing is that we do trust you," said Bodisham. "In spite of your -- extremism.""You'd better," said Rud with grim conviction. "I'm right. What is extremism? The whole truth and nothing but the truth. I ask you.""It's because of his extremism you trust him," said Chiffan. "It's because in the last resort we believe in his indiscretion, and know he won't fail us even if we fail ourselves. All leadership is extravagance. Extra-vagance. Going a bit ahead."Rud did not quite understand that. "It's because you know I'm right," he said."It's because," said Chiffan, letting his thoughts run away with him," to make a new world, the leader must be a fundamentally destructive man, a recklessly destructive man. He breaks his way through the jungle and we follow...We cannot do without you, Rud. By H.g.wells Bodisham Rud Chiffan Queer Thing

Then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings, that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him. By H.g.wells Life Easily Longings Haltingly Began

When Barnet returned his men were already calling out for water, and all day long the line of pits suffered greatly from thirst. For food they had chocolate and bread. 'At By H.g.wells Barnet Water Thirst Returned Men

If Max [Aitken] gets to Heaven he won't last long. He will be chucked out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell ... after having secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies in both places, of course. By H.g.wells Aitken Max Heaven Long Hell

When we think of readapting mankind to a world of unity and co-operation, we have to consider that practically all the educational machinery on earth, is still in the hands of God-selling or Marx-selling combines. Everywhere in close co-operation with our nationalist governments, the oil and steel interests, our drug salesmanship, and so forth, the hirelines of these huge religious concerns, with more or less zeal and loyalty, are selling destruction to mankind. By H.g.wells Godselling Marxselling Earth Combines Mankind

I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history. By H.g.wells Nazareth History Historian Believer Confess

And she wanted to be free. It wasn't Mr. Brumley she wanted; he was but a means - if indeed he was a means - to an end. The person she wanted, the person she had always wanted - was herself. Could Mr. Brumley give her that? Would Mr. Brumley give her that? Was it conceivable he would carry sacrifice to such a pitch as that?... By H.g.wells Brumley Wanted Free Person Give

Success is to be measured not by wealth, power, or fame, but by the ratio between what a man is and what he might be. By H.g.wells Power Success Wealth Fame Measured

Language is the nourishment of the thought of man, that serves only as it undergoes metabolism, and becomes thought and lives, and in its very living passes away. You scientific people, with your fancy of a terrible exactitude in language, of indestructible foundations built, as that Wordsworthian doggerel on the title-page of Nature says, "for aye," are marvellously without imagination! By H.g.wells Thought Man Metabolism Lives Language

Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal. By H.g.wells Ruling Directing Martian Body Man

In the scientific world I find just that disinterested devotion to great ends that I hope will spread at last through the entire range of human activity. By H.g.wells Activity Scientific World Find Disinterested

My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. By H.g.wells Mood Exaltation People Clothes Blind

We are but phantoms, and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights - so be it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together! By H.g.wells Phantoms Desires Wind Pass Lights

The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past. By H.g.wells Shook Relations Thought Past Catastrophe

Money means in a thousand minds a thousand subtly different, roughly similar, systems of images, associations, suggestions and impulses. By H.g.wells Associations Thousand Money Roughly Similar

Even men who were engaged in organizing debt-serf cultivation and debt-serf industrialism in the American cotton districts, in the old rubber plantations, and in the factories of India, China, and South Italy, appeared as generous supporters of and subscribers to the sacred cause of individual liberty. By H.g.wells China India Italy American South

Our species may yet end its strange eventful history as just the last, the cleverest of the great apes. The great ape that was clever - but not clever enough. It could escape from most things but not from its own mental confusion. By H.g.wells Great Species End Strange Eventful

Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him. By H.g.wells Man Animal Nature Unnatural Rebel

With Penge I associate my first realisations of the wonder and beauty of twilight and night, the effect of dark walls reflecting lamplight, and the mystery of blue haze-veiled hillsides of houses, the glare of shops by night, the glowing steam and streaming sparks of railway trains and railway signals lit up in the darkness. By H.g.wells Night Railway Penge Lamplight Houses

Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas, - he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working, I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology. By H.g.wells Oliver Scientific Professor Bounder Instinct

I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket trick, packs of cards that looked all right, and all that sort of thing, but never had I thought of going in until one day, almost without warning, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so conducted himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in. By H.g.wells Magic Shop Gip Window Times

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown him far less skepticism. For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. By H.g.wells Time Machine Believed Filby Traveler

If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you. By H.g.wells Heaven Atheology Theology Turns Wrong

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very bright, riding through the empty blue sky. By H.g.wells Peaceful Splendour Night Healed West

Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that his light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still.'The Rediscovery of the Unique' Fortnightly Review (1891) By H.g.wells Science Alight Match Man Unique

We've got to escape from narrowness. We're a movement, not a conspiracy. We've got to radiate contacts, and have as many people aware of us as possible. That's living, modern common sense. By H.g.wells Narrowness Escape Movement Conspiracy Contacts

He knew clearly enough that his imagination was growing traitor to him, and yet at times it seemed the ship he sailed in, his fellow-passengers, the sailors, the wide sea, were all part of a filmy phantasmagoria that hung, scarcely veiling it, between him and a horrible real world. Then the Porroh man, thrusting his diabolical face through that curtain, was the one real and undeniable thing. At that he would get up and touch things, taste something, gnaw something, burn his hand with a match, or run a needle into himself.("Pollock And The Porrah Man") By H.g.wells Man Fellowpassengers Sailors Sea Hung

They were put into my pockets by Weena, when I traveled into Time. By H.g.wells Weena Time Put Pockets Traveled

The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena. By H.g.wells Weena Red Tongues Licking Heap

My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration. By H.g.wells Weena Decoration Pockets Puzzled Concluded

The whole world," he said, "is going Radical again. Fundamentally. In religion. In politics. In law. The Common Man has been trying to get his Radicalism said and done plainly and clearly for a hundred and fifty years. Now we take it on. Our movement. The new wave of attack." "And fill a ditch in our turn," said Irwell. "Maybe we're over the last ditch," said Rud. "There must be a last ditch somewhere..."All other revolutionary movements have been experiments so far, Christianity, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and more or less failures. They were experiments in liberation and they did not liberate. The old things wriggled back. But ours may be the experiment that succeeds. We may get to the Common-sense World State. Yes -- we -- in this room...Why not? It has to come somehow, somewhen... If it doesn't come pretty soon, there won't be much of humanity left to liberate. By H.g.wells Radical Revolution Ditch World Liberate

And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestled among their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city ... The great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens ... By H.g.wells Incessantly Churches Inns Countryside Knew

Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction". Source: Wikipedia By H.g.wells George Fiction Science Herbert Machine

Help me - and I will do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power. He By H.g.wells Great Things Man Power Invisible

But you begin now to realise," said the Invisible Man, "the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter - no covering - to get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again. By H.g.wells Man Invisible Realise Condition Begin

And then," said Sarnac, "I remember that I made a prophecy. I made it - when did I make it? Two thousand years ago? Or two weeks ago? I sat in Fanny's little sitting-room, an old-world creature amidst her old-world furnishings, and I said that men and women would not always suffer as we were suffering then. I said that we were still poor savages, living only in the bleak dawn of civilisation, and that we suffered because we were under-bred, under-trained and darkly ignorant of ourselves, that the mere fact that we knew our own unhappiness was the promise of better things and that a day would come when charity and understanding would light the world so that men and women would no longer hurt themselves and one another as they were doing now everywhere, universally, in law and in restriction and in jealousy and in hate, all round and about the earth. By H.g.wells Sarnac Made Prophecy Remember Ago

What right have they to hope? They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. The hope of mankind - what is it? That some day the Over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated. Subdued if not eliminated. The world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated. Their duty - it's a fine duty too! - is to due. The death of the failure! That is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things. By H.g.wells Hope Work Day Eliminated Subdued

But I know it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. By H.g.wells White Eyes Back Dull Strange

You English," said Steenhold."You Americans," said Rud."When you aren't as fresh as paint," he said, "you Americans are as stale as old cabbage leaves. I'm amazed at your Labour leaders, at the sort of things you can still take seriously as Presidential Candidates. These leonine reverberators tossing their manes back in order to keep their eyes on the White House -- they belong to the Pleistocene. We dropped that sort of head in England after John Bright. When the Revolution is over and I retire, I shall retire as Hitler did, to some remote hunting-lodge, and we'll have the heads of Great Labour Leaders and Presidential Hopes stuck all round the Hall. Hippopotami won't be in it. By H.g.wells Americans English Steenhold Rud Labour

We may suggest that a nation is in effect any assembly, mixture, or confusion of people which is either afflicted by or wishes to be afflicted by a foreign office of its own, in order that it should behave collectively as if its needs, desires, and vanities were beyond comparison more important than the general welfare of humanity. By H.g.wells Mixture Desires Afflicted Assembly Humanity

She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and she knew now that this matter of the man friend and nothing else in the world is the central issue in the emancipation of women. The difficulty of him is latent in every other restriction of which women complain. The complete emancipation of women will come with complete emancipation of humanity from jealousy - and no sooner. All other emancipations are shams until a woman may go about as freely with this man as with that, and nothing remains for emancipation when she can. By H.g.wells Emancipation Women Rebellion Learnt Things

There's lots will take things as they arefat and stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it's all wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, By H.g.wells Sort Stupid Wrong Lots Lot

We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories ... And those that carry us forward, are dreams. By H.g.wells Machines Time Memories Forward Dreams

Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American Eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich. By H.g.wells Eagle Europe Atlantic American Ostrich

Every one of these hundreds of millions of human beings is in some form seeking happiness ... Not one is altogether noble nor altogether trustworthy nor altogether consistent; and not one is altogether vile ... Not a single one but has at some time wept. By H.g.wells Altogether Happiness Hundreds Millions Human

Love is not only the cardinal fact in the individual life, but the most important concern of the community; after all, the way in which the young people of this generation pair off determines the fate of the nation; all the other affairs of the state are subsidiary to that. And we leave it to flushed and blundering youth to stumble on its own significance, with nothing to guide it but shocked looks and sentimental twaddle and base whisperings and cant-smeared examples. By H.g.wells Love Life Community Nation Cardinal

And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Upperworld people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the eld. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same. By H.g.wells Underworld Blots Landscape Rose Cupolas

It is only now and then, in a jungle, or amidst the towering white menace of a burnt or burning Australian forest, that Nature strips the moral veils from vegetation and we apprehend its stark ferocity. By H.g.wells Australian Nature Jungle Forest Ferocity

The Jews looked for a special savior, a messiah, who was to redeem mankind by the agreeable process of restoring the fabulous glories of David and Solomon, and bringing the whole world at last under the firm but benevolent Jewish heel. By H.g.wells Solomon Jews David Jewish Savior

Me was the glittering desolation of the sea, the awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me the island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen. The enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily, with sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash. The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low over the distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these four dead bodies. By H.g.wells Beast People Sea Island Hushed

About midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple of miles out at sea to the southeast of Sidmouth, and a lantern was seen waving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. The nearer boats at once hurried towards the alarm. The adventuresome occupants of the boat, a seaman, a curate, and two schoolboys, had actually seen the monsters passing under their boat. The creatures, it seems, like most deep-sea organisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating, five fathoms deep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the blackness of the water, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep, rolling over and over, and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation towards the southeast. By H.g.wells Sidmouth Boat Midnight Excited Hails

I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring, and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island. A By H.g.wells State Deep Enduring Fear Mind

Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet and all its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensities to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deep space, and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning. By H.g.wells Man Rest Death Individual Call

A series of prohibitions called the Law - I had already heard them recited - battled in their minds with the deep-seated, ever-rebellious cravings of their animal natures. This Law they were perpetually repeating, I found, and - perpetually breaking. By H.g.wells Law Recited Battled Deepseated Everrebellious

I was never a great amorist, though I have loved several people very deeply. By H.g.wells Amorist Deeply Great Loved People

What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting? By H.g.wells Ages Knee Middle Housemaid Jousting

The essence of its failure was that it could not sustain unity. In its early stages its citizens, both patrician and plebeian, had a certain tradition of justice and good faith, and of the loyalty of all citizens to the law, and of the goodness of the law for all citizens; it clung to this idea of the importance of the law and of law-abidingness nearly into the first century B.C. But the unforeseen invention and development of money, the temptations and disruptions of imperial expansion, the entanglement of electoral methods, weakened and swamped this tradition by presenting old issues in new disguises under which the judgment did not recognize them, and by enabling men to be loyal to the professions of citizenship and disloyal to its spirit. By H.g.wells Law Citizens Unity Essence Failure

He beheld in swift succession the incidents in the brief tale of his experience. His wretched home, his still more wretched school-days, the years of vicious life he had led since then, one act of selfish dishonour leading to another; it was all clear and pitiless now, all its squalid folly, in the cold light of the dawn. He came to the hut, to the fight with the Porroh man, to the retreat down the river to Sulyma, to the Mendi assassin and his red parcel, to his frantic endeavours to destroy the head, to the growth of his hallucination. It was a hallucination! He knew it was. A hallucination merely. For a moment he snatched at hope. He looked away from the glass, and on the bracket, the inverted head grinned and grimaced at him ... With the stiff fingers of his bandaged hand he felt at his neck for the throb of his arteries. The morning was very cold, the steel blade felt like ice.("Pollock And The Porrah Man") By H.g.wells Hallucination Experience Wretched Beheld Swift

The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence. By H.g.wells Hiding Low Dark Eyes Ocean

New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises 'Why then are you not taking part in them? By H.g.wells Belittled Arises Stirring Things Humiliating

No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lieor a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it? By H.g.wells Expect Prophecy Lieor Workshop Fiction

In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked - those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes! - as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. By H.g.wells Hands Back Moment Clutched Mistaking

The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves of colour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intense blue, pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods of colour, not stained glass windows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, no colours on earth could compare with them. Twice the Angel raised himself, only to fall over sideways again. Then the beating of the wings diminished, the terrified face grew pale, the floods of colour abated, and suddenly with a sob he lay prone, and the changing hues of the broken wings faded swiftly into one uniform dull grey hue. Oh! By H.g.wells Vicar Wings Colour Aghast Hand

[T]hat mutual jealousy, that intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifully dull. By H.g.wells Hat Jealousy Criticism Perfection Dull

Under this tremendous dawn of power and freedom, under a sky ablaze with promise, in the very presence of science standing like some bountiful goddess over all the squat darknesses of human life, holding patiently in her strong arms, until men chose to take them, security, plenty, the solution of riddles, the key of the bravest adventures, in her very presence, and with the earnest of her gifts in court, the world was to witness such things as the squalid spectacle of the Dass-Tata patent litigation. There By H.g.wells Presence Security Plenty Freedom Promise

Mendham was a cadaverous man with a magnificent beard. He looked,indeed, as if he had run to beard as a mustard plant runs to seed. But when he spoke you found he had a voice as well. By H.g.wells Mendham Beard Cadaverous Man Magnificent

The warm lights that once rounded off our world so completely are betrayed for what they are, smoky and guttering candles. Beyond what once seemed a casket of dutiful security is now a limitless and indifferent universe. Ours is the wisdom or there is no wisdom; ours is the decision or there is no decision. That burthen is upon each of us in the measure of our capacity. The talent has been given us and we may not bury it. By H.g.wells Smoky Candles Warm Lights Rounded

Dragging out life to the last possible second is not living to the best effect. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat. The best of life, Passworthy, lies nearest to the edge of death. By H.g.wells Dragging Effect Living Life Passworthy

They ought not to have let things come to this," he said, but he was never very clear even to himself who or why "They" were nor what "This" was. Some person or persons unknown was to blame. He hated these unknowns in general. But he was unable to focus his hatred into hating some responsible person or persons in particular. If only he could find who it was had neglected to do something, or had done something wrong or messed about with things, they would catch it. He'd get even with them somehow. By H.g.wells Clear Person Persons Things Blame

Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.' Then By H.g.wells Learn Watch Meaning Careful Hasty

Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all. By H.g.wells Face World Learn Watch Meaning

If there is no God, nothing matters. If there is a God, nothing else matters. By H.g.wells God Matters

Things were rather larger, more obvious and rougher on the American side, but the issues were essentially the same. The general public voted and demonstrated, but its voting seemed to lead to nothing. It felt that things were done behind its back and over its head but it could never understand clearly how. It never seemed able to get sound news out of its newspapers nor good faith out of its politicians. It resisted, it fumbled, it was becoming more and more suspicious and sceptical, but it was profoundly confused and ill-informed. By H.g.wells American Larger Side Things Obvious

Wells recognized that these crude novels correctly foresaw modern warfare as aiming at the massive destruction of the physical structures of an enemy civilization and the terrorizing if not annihilating of its noncombatant population. His Martians anticipate with uncomfortable accuracy, for example, American bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, followed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and boastful proclamations of "shock and awe" tactics against Iraq. By H.g.wells Population Recognized Crude Correctly Foresaw

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers. By H.g.wells Overlook Trouble Change Intelligence Law

And seeing all the Hellespont covered over with the ships and all the shores and the plains of Abydos full of men, then Xerxes pronounced himself a happy man, and after that he fell to weeping. Artabanus, his uncle, therefore perceiving him the same who at first boldly declared his opinion advising Xerxes not to march against Hellas-this man, I say, having observed that Xerxes wept, asked as follows: 'O king, how far different from one another are the things which thou hast done now and a short while before now! for having pronounced thyself a happy man, thou art now shedding tears.' He said : 'Yea, for after I had reckoned up, it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by. By H.g.wells Xerxes Man Hellespont Abydos Happy

Presently he added to himself the power of the horse and the ox, he borrowed the carrying strength of water and the driving force of the wind, he quickened his fire by blowing, and his simple tools, pointed first with copper and then with iron, increased and varied By H.g.wells Presently Wind Blowing Tools Pointed

I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped there and then. "We're on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented," I said, and put the accent on "we." "If you want to keep me out of this, you'll have to do it with a gun. I'm coming down to be your fourth labourer to-morrow. By H.g.wells Line Straight Knew Staking Jumped

There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. By H.g.wells Heaven Sense Infinite Peace Protection

The essence of the Revolution is to abolish the attainment of unqualified power of man over man either by vote-getting, money-pressure or crude terror. The Revolution repudiates profit or terror altogether as methods of human intercourse. It turns the attention of men and women back from a frantic and futile struggle for the means of power, a struggle against our primary social instincts, to an innate urgency to make and to a beneficial competition for preeminence in social service. It recalls man to a clean and creative life from the entanglements and perversion of secondary issues into which he has fallen. It replaces property and official authority by the compelling prestige of sound achievement. Eminent service remains the only source of influence left in the world . . . By H.g.wells Revolution Man Terror Votegetting Moneypressure

Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties. By H.g.wells Patriotism Assertion Duties Mere National

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. By H.g.wells Sun Mars World Miles Reader

Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. By H.g.wells Restraint Soberness Thought Act State

Money, like most other inventions, had happened to mankind, and men had still to develop to-day they have still to perfect the science and morality of money. By H.g.wells Money Inventions Mankind Happened Men

They despite and hate the government more and more, but they don't know how to set about changing it. The country is dying for some sort of lead, and so far all it is getting is a crowd of fresh professional leaders. Who never get anywhere. Who do not seem to be aiming anywhere. We are living in a world of jaded politics. Poverty increases, prices rise, unemployment spreads, mines, factories stagnate, and nothing is done. By H.g.wells Hate Government Set Changing Lead

Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surrounds. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never dies, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreauand for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred me. By H.g.wells Beasts Surrounds Instincts Fitly Adapted

In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows - north, west, and south - and bookshelves covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Dr. Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Dr. Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think of it. By H.g.wells Kemp Burdock Early Evening Time

Ignorance is not an extension of time By H.g.wells Ignorance Time Extension

In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And, in a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughter-house. By H.g.wells Utopia Meat Round World Slaughterhouses

For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer master, but an animal among animals; under the Martian heel. By H.g.wells Men Moment Touched Emotion Common

It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds their cities,live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until men want them out of the way, and then they go out of the way. That's what we are now _ just ants. By H.g.wells Ants Men Revolutions Lives Wars

The present writer is a prophet by use and wont. He is more interested in to-morrow than he is in to-day, and the past is just material for future guessing. "Think of the men who have walked here!" said a tourist in the Roman Coliseum. It was a Futurist mind that answered: "Think of the men who will. By H.g.wells Wont Present Writer Prophet Men

When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked persistence. Then, as I said, everyone was forbidden to listen to me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairy-tale books were taken away from me for a time - because I was too 'imaginative'. Eh! Yes, they did that! My father belonged to the old school ... And my story was driven back upon myself. I whispered it to my pillow - my pillow that was often damp and salt to my whispering lips with childish tears. And I added always to my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt request: 'Please God I may dream of the garden. O! take me back to my garden. By H.g.wells Aunt Persistence Punished Wicked Garden

Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure had gone steadily on to a climax ... And the harvest was what I saw. By H.g.wells Strength Security Feebleness Outcome Sets

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. By H.g.wells Moral Halo Indignation Jealousy

In another place was a vast array of idols - Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly took my fancy. By H.g.wells Polynesian Mexican Grecian Phoenician Idols

The stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference between Sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. He worked, as Mrs. Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would come down early and be continuously busy. On others he would rise late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke, sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail of what she heard. By H.g.wells Sunday Church Costume Mrs Hall

What did it matter, since it was unreality, all of it, the pain and desire, the beginning and the end? There was no reality except this solitary road, this quite solitary road, along which on went rather puzzled, rather tired ... By H.g.wells Road Matter Unreality Desire End

We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble? By H.g.wells Job Death Fresh Emotions Afresh

I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes ... My world began to expand very rapidly, ... the reading habit had got me securely. By H.g.wells Reading Sofa Scenes Rapidly Discovered

Already he knew something of the history of the intervening years. He had heard now of the moral decay that had followed the collapse of supernatural religion in the minds of ignoble man, the decline of public honour, the ascendency of wealth. For men who had lost their belief in God had still kept their faith in property, and wealth ruled a venial world. By H.g.wells Years Knew History Intervening Wealth

The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. By H.g.wells Intellects Enlarged Powers Hearts Pressure

For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive. By H.g.wells Existence Alive Time Believed Mankind

A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce. By H.g.wells Corps Man God Trained Temple

During her school days, especially her earlier school days, the world had been very explicit with her, telling her what to do, what not to do, giving her lessons to learn and games to play and interests of the most suitable and various kinds. Presently she woke up to the fact that there was a considerable group of interests called being in love and getting married, with certain attractive and amusing subsidiary developments, such as flirtation and "being interested" in people of the opposite sex. She approached this field with her usual liveliness of apprehension. But here she met with a check. These interests her world promptly, through the agency of schoolmistresses, older school-mates, her aunt, and a number of other responsible and authoritative people, assured her she must on no account think about. Miss By H.g.wells Days School Interests Telling Giving

The crisis [the Great Depression] discovered a great man in Franklin Roosevelt ... None too soon he has carried America forward to the second stage of democratic realization. His New Deal involves such collective controls of the national business that it would be absurd to call it anything but socialism, were it not for a prejudice lingering on from the old individualist days against that word ... Both Roosevelt and Stalin were attempting to produce a huge, modern, scientifically organized, socialist state, the one out of a warning crisis and the other out of a chaos ... By H.g.wells Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt Discovered

Ambition - what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when her name must needs be Delilah? By H.g.wells Ambition Good Pride Place Delilah

The day of democracy is past," he said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before - it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth ... By H.g.wells Past Day Power Wealth Democracy

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess. By H.g.wells World Passion Playing Unaccountable Chess

we are dealing with a new kind of army altogether, no longer held together in the solidarity of a common citizenship. As that tie fails, the legions discover another in esprit de corps, in their common difference from and their common interest against the general community. They begin to develop a warmer interest in their personal leaders, who secure them pay and plunder. Before the Punic Wars it was the tendency of ambitious men in Rome to court the plebeians; after that time they began to court the legions. Comparison By H.g.wells Common Altogether Citizenship Dealing Kind

It was some time before I could summon resolution to go down through the trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach. At last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the thicket upon the sand, I heard some other body come crashing after me. At that I completely lost my head with fear, and began running along the sand. Forthwith there came the swift patter of soft feet in pursuit. I gave a wild cry, and redoubled my pace. Some dim, black things about three or four times the size of rabbits went running or hopping up from the beach towards the bushes as I passed. By H.g.wells Sand Summon Resolution Trees Flank

The new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and quantity and a means of expression,more exact,compact, and ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential facts of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world wide states that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write. By H.g.wells Language Great Affording Exactcompact Science

Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart. By H.g.wells Figures World Shocking Things Heart

There are men on that Commission who would steal the brakes off a mountain railway just before they went down in it...It's a struggle with suicidal imbeciles.The Secret Places of The Heart (Kindle Location 59) By H.g.wells Heart Kindle Location Commission Secret

I am prepared to maintain that Honesty is essentially an anarchistic and disintegrating force in society, that communities are held together and the progress of civilization made possible only by vigorous and sometimes even, violent Lying; that the Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good. By H.g.wells Lying Good Honesty Social Contract

Losing your way on a journey is unfortunate. But, losing your reason for the journey is a fate more cruel. By H.g.wells Losing Unfortunate Journey Cruel Reason

A [national] flag has no real significance for peaceful uses. By H.g.wells National Flag Real Significance Peaceful

Christ is the most unique person of history. No man can write a history of the human race without giving first and foremost place to the penniless Teacher of Nazareth. By H.g.wells Christ History Unique Person Nazareth

And the great difference between man and monkey is in the larynx, he said, in the incapacity to frame delicately different sounding symbols by which thought could be sustained By H.g.wells Larynx Sustained Great Difference Man

It is all one spectacle of forces running to waste, of people who use and do not replace, the story of a country hectic with a wasting aimless fever of trade and money-making and pleasure-seeking. By H.g.wells Waste Replace Pleasureseeking Spectacle Forces

Everyone leaves the world a little better some by leaving. By H.g.wells Leaving Leaves World

The army ages men sooner than the law and philosophy; it exposes them more freely to germs, which undermine and destroy, and it shelters them more completely from thought, which stimulates and preserves. By H.g.wells Philosophy Germs Destroy Thought Preserves

Arson, after all, is an artificial crime ... A large number of houses deserve to be burnt. By H.g.wells Arson Crime Artificial Burnt Large

I believe that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies. By H.g.wells Impossible Implies Selection Conscious Reproduction

Alexander the Great changed a few boundaries and killed a few men. Both he and Napoleon were forced into fame by circumstances outside of themselves and by currents of the time, but Margaret Sanger made currents and circumstances. When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine. By H.g.wells Great Margaret Sanger Alexander Men

I felt naked. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. I began to feel the need of fellowship. I wanted to question, wanted to speak, wanted to relate my experience. What is this spirit in man that urges him forever to depart from happiness, to toil and to place himself in danger? By H.g.wells Felt Naked Wanted Feel Swoop

So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. By H.g.wells Ground Havenots Workers End Conditions

Life falls into place only with God. By H.g.wells God Life Falls Place

They know they dare not have their stuff stripped down to plain words. These Bishops and parsons with their beloved Christianity are like a man who has poisoned his wife and says her body's too sacred for a post-mortem. Nowadays, by the light we have, any ecclesiastic must be born blind or an intellectual rascal. Don't tell me. The world's had this apostolic succession of oily old humbugs from early Egypt onwards, trying to come it over people. Antiquity's no excuse. A sham is no better for being six thousand years stale. Christianity's no more use to us now thanthe Pyramids. By H.g.wells Words Dare Stuff Stripped Plain

It doesn't follow that a nasty habit of mind is any less nasty because it's ancestral. It doesn't follow you can't cure it. Why scratch fleas for ever? Gambling, speculation, is a social disease. It's as natural and desirable as -- syphilis... By H.g.wells Nasty Follow Ancestral Habit Mind

But he was one of those weak creatures, void of pride, timorous, anemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves. By H.g.wells Timorous Anemic Face God Creatures

It's no use locking the door after the steed is stolen. By H.g.wells Stolen Locking Door Steed

That Anarchist world, I admit, is our dream; we do believe - well, I, at any rate, believe this present world, this planet, will some day bear a race beyond our most exalted and temerarious dreams, a race begotten of our wills and the substance of our bodies, a race, so I have said it, 'who will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a footstool, and laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars,' but the way to that is through education and discipline and law. Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create a system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling and action. Socialism is the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men. By H.g.wells Race World Anarchist Anarchism Dream

There seems to be no limit to the lies that honest but stupid disciples will tell for the glory of their master and for what they regard as the success of their propaganda. Men who would scorn to tell a lie in everyday life will become unscrupulous cheats and liars when they have given themselves up to propagandist work; it is one of the perplexing absurdities of our human nature. By H.g.wells Propaganda Limit Honest Stupid Disciples

Countless people ... will hate the New World Order ... and will die protesting against it ... we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents ... By H.g.wells Countless People Order World Malcontents

When the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the New World Order and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people. By H.g.wells World Democracy System People Struggle

It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go ... We are living in the end of the sovereign states ... In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish ... Countless people ... will hate the new world order ... and will die protesting against it. By H.g.wells System Nationalist Individualism World Socialism

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own. By H.g.wells Homicide Time Politician Willfully Made

Our challenge is not to educate the children we used to have or want to have, but to educate the children who come to the schoolhouse door. By H.g.wells Educate Children Door Challenge Schoolhouse

There will be little drudgery in this better ordered world. Natural power harnessed in machines will be the general drudge. What drudgery is inevitable will be done as a service and duty for a few years or months out of each life; it will not consume nor degrade the whole life of anyone. By H.g.wells World Ordered Drudgery Life Natural

He protested. "Wealth," he said, "is no sort of power at all unless you make it one. If it is so in your world it is so by inadvertency. Wealth is a State-made thing, a convention, the most artificial of powers. You can, by subtle statesmanship, contrive what it shall buy and what it shall not. In your world it would seem you have made leisure, movement, any sort of freedom, life itself, _purchaseable_. The more fools you! A poor working man with you is a man in discomfort and fear. No wonder your rich have power. By H.g.wells Wealth Protested World Power Sort

The German people are an orderly, vain, deeply sentimental and rather insensitive people. They seem to feel at their best when they are singing in chorus, saluting or obeying orders. By H.g.wells Vain German Orderly Deeply People

The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons. By H.g.wells Time Machine Rhododendrons Left Deserted

It's against reason," said Filby."What reason?" said the Time Traveller. By H.g.wells Filby Traveller Reason Time

There comes a moment in the day when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes that hour when you are bored; that's the time for sex. By H.g.wells Morning Attended Afternoon Moment Day

It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream. By H.g.wells Beginning Journey Dream

If you do not want to explore an egoism you should not read autobiography. By H.g.wells Autobiography Explore Egoism Read

Our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary By H.g.wells World Molten Earth Life Long

Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. By H.g.wells Security Energy Strength Weakness Conditions

I am for world-control of production and of trade and transport, for a world coinage, and the confederation of mankind. I am for the super-State ... By H.g.wells Transport Coinage Mankind Worldcontrol Production

As mankind 'matures,' as it becomes more possible to be frank in the scrutiny of the self and others and in the publication of one's findings, biography and autobiography will take the place of fiction for the investigation and discussion of character. By H.g.wells Matures Mankind Findings Biography Character

I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. By H.g.wells Figures White Apelike Hill Body

For in the latter days of that passionate life that lay now so far behind him, the conception of a free and equal manhood had become a very real thing to him. He had hoped, as indeed his age had hoped, rashly taking it for granted, that the sacrifice of the many to the few would some day cease, that a day was near when every child born of woman should have a fair and assured chance of happiness. And here, after two hundred years, the same hope, still unfulfilled, cried passionately through the city. After two hundred years, he knew, greater than ever, grown with the city to gigantic proportions, were poverty and helpless labour and all the sorrows of his time. By H.g.wells Day Hoped Years Passionate Life

For ages that stagger the imagination this earth spun hot and lifeless, and again for ages of equal vastness it held no life above the level of the animalculae in a drop of ditch-water. Not only is Space from the point of view of life and humanity empty, but Time is empty also. By H.g.wells Ages Lifeless Ditchwater Life Stagger

At times I suffered from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me. I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very strong upon me that night. By H.g.wells Suffered Strangest Sense Detachment World

At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world around me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. By H.g.wells Remote Space Suffer Strangest Sense

Indeed Christianity passes. Passes - it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits. By H.g.wells Christianity Passes Egypt Arianism Cathedrals

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coarch and Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a ready acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn. By H.g.wells February Bramblehurst Snow Day Year

After telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book schoolmaster and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage. By H.g.wells Live Telephone Kinematograph Newspaper Book

Civilization is a race between disaster and education. By H.g.wells Civilization Education Race Disaster

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. By H.g.wells Human Catastrophe History Race Education

Who breaks the Law -' said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim and turning towards us. It seemed to me there was a touch of exultation in his voice. '- goes back to the House of Pain,' they all clamoured; 'goes back to the House of Pain, O Master! By H.g.wells Law Moreau Pain House Taking

Welles and I differed, however, in our interpretation of the results of the Munich Conference, he being optimistic, I skeptical. In a radio address on October 3, several days after the conference, in which he described the steps taken by the United States Government just prior to Munich, he said that today, perhaps more than at any time during the past two decades, there was presented the opportunity for the establishment by the nations of the world of a new world order based upon justice and upon law. It seemed to me that the colors in the picture were much darker. By H.g.wells Munich Conference Welles Differed Optimistic

They were all intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their loyalty to the Law. Yet I felt an absolute assurance in my own mind that the Hyena-Swine was implicated in the rabbit-killing. A strange persuasion came upon me that, save for the grossness of the line, save for the grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and fate in its simplest form. By H.g.wells Law Excited Intensely Overflowing Noisy

Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind. By H.g.wells Modern War Mind International Hostility

Let's have the facts first," insisted Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "Let's be sure we'd be acting perfectly right in bustin' that there door open. A door onbust is always open to bustin', but ye can't onbust a door once you've busted en." And By H.g.wells Wadgers Sandy Insisted Door Bustin

A door onbust is always open to bustin', but ye can't onbust a door once you've busted en. By H.g.wells Door Bustin Onbust Open Busted

He spares no resource in telling of his dead inventions ... Bare verbs he rarely tolerates. He splits infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing. He presses the passing colloquialism into his service. His vast paragraphis sweat and struggle; the By H.g.wells Inventions Spares Resource Telling Dead

So it was that the war in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, besides this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong sweep to death? By H.g.wells Began War Air Men Archangels

It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. By H.g.wells Beginning Dawn Past Twilight Awakening

When we've got a common philosophy and a common objective; then we can advance in open order. We shall be a great team. But we've got to make sure of that common set of ideas. Maybe we shall find our formulae difficult for some of these new types. If we keep our minds open, we may find that they are right and that our formulae have to be modified. Probably -- it's a thought that shouldn't dishearten us -- but probably we don't know everything. By H.g.wells Common Objective Order Philosophy Advance

All four Gospels agree in giving us a picture of a very definite personality. One is obliged to say, Here was a man. This could not have been invented. By H.g.wells Gospels Personality Agree Giving Picture

But the old traditions of sectarian misdirection still in spite of a certain advance in technical efficiency, cripple and distort the general mind. "All that has been changed," cry indignant teachers under criticism. But the evidence that this teaching of theirs still fails to produce a public that is alert, critical, and capable of vigorous readjustment in the face of overwhelming danger, is to be seen in the newspapers that satisfy the Tewler public, the arguments and slogans that appeal to it, the advertisements that succeed with it, the stuff it swallows. It is a press written by Homo Tewler for Homo Tewler all up and down the scale. The Times Tewler, the Daily Mail Tewler, the Herald, the Tribune, the Daily Worker; there is no difference except a difference in scale and social atmosphere. Through them all ran the characteristic Tewler streak of willful ignorance, deliberate disingenuousness, and self-protective illusion. By H.g.wells Tewler Homo Efficiency Cripple Mind

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of men. By H.g.wells Comfort Flowers Shriveled Brittle Gratitude

By this time I was nolonger very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed thelimit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost,and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything By H.g.wells Miserable Time Nolonger Terrified Passed

An invisible man is a man with power. By H.g.wells Power Man Invisible

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. By H.g.wells Troubles Chance World Hold Reasonable

My walking powers were evidently miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest. By H.g.wells Miraculous Time Walking Powers Evidently

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder. By H.g.wells Beauty Beholder Heart

Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture ... By H.g.wells Satan Scripture Delights Equally Statistics

Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathized at least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully. By H.g.wells Moreau Object Intelligible Sympathized Things

The most evil institution in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. By H.g.wells Church Roman Catholic Evil Institution

Endless conflicts. Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great and little cannot understand one another. By H.g.wells Endless Conflicts Misunderstanding Great Life

The choice is: the Universe ... or nothing. By H.g.wells Universe Choice

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. By H.g.wells Wrought Animals Dodo Races Judge

In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again. By H.g.wells Turnips Necks Eyes Middle Night

Man is now a new animal, a new and different animal; he can jump a hundred miles, see through brick walls, bombard atoms, analyse the stars, set about his business with the strength of a million horses. And so forth and so on. Yes. Yes. But all the same he goes on behaving like the weak little needy ape he used to be. He grabs, snarls, quarrels, fears, stampedes, and plays in his immense powder magazine until he seems likely to blow up the whole damned show. By H.g.wells Animal Man Miles Walls Bombard

As the journalists of the time phased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic aeroplane became indeed a mania; everyone of means was frantic to possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust and danger of the road, and in France in the year 1943 thirty thousand of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed, and soared humming softly into the sky. By H.g.wells Air Leap Journalists Time Phased

Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts? By H.g.wells Galilean Hearts Day Small

But the Modern Utopia must not be static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages. Nowadays we do not resist and overcome the great stream of things, but rather float upon it. We build now not citadels, but ships of state. By H.g.wells Modern Utopia Stage Stages Kinetic

Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mador have I? By H.g.wells Dreaming World Mador

Armament should be an illegality everywhere, and some sort of international force should patrol a treaty-bound world. Partial armament is one of those absurdities dear to moderate-minded 'reasonable' men. Armament itself is making war. Making a gun, pointing a gun, and firing it are all acts of the same order. It should be illegal to construct anywhere upon earth any mechanism for the specific purpose of killing men. When you see a gun it is reasonable to ask: 'Whom is that intended to kill?' By H.g.wells Armament World Gun Illegality Sort

Every symbiosis is in its degree underlain by hostility, and only by proper regulation and often elaborate adjustment, can the state of mutual benefit be maintained. Even in human affairs, partnerships for mutual benefit are not so easily kept up, in spite of men being endowed with intelligence and so being able to grasp the meaning of such a relation. But in lower organisms, there is no such comprehension to help keep the relationship going. Mutual partnerships are adaptations as blindly entered into and as unconsciously brought about as any others. By H.g.wells Mutual Benefit Hostility Adjustment Maintained

A federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice, to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history. By H.g.wells Education Human Humanity Justice Health

Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back - changed! By H.g.wells Ago Ages Thousands Sunshine Man

Kemp: I demonstrated conclusively this morning that invisibilityI.M: Never mind what YOU'VE DEMONSTRATED!I'm starving, said the voice, and the night ischilly for a man without clothes. By H.g.wells Kemp Demonstrated Invisibilityim Starving Voice

They had certain Fixed Ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They really were hypnotized, had been told certain things were impossible, and certain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute. By H.g.wells Fixed Ideas Moreau Imaginations Minds

For three centuries the life of the Hebrews was like the life of a man who insists upon living in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, and is consequently being run over constantly by omnibuses and motor-lorries. Pul By H.g.wells Life Hebrews Thoroughfare Motorlorries Centuries

The brain upon which my experiences have been written is not a particularly good one. If their were brain-shows, as there are cat and dog shows, I doubt if it would get even a third class prize. By H.g.wells Brain Experiences Written Good Brainshows

For all my desire to be interesting, I have to confess that for most things and people I don't give a damn. By H.g.wells Interesting Damn Desire Confess Things

Men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. By H.g.wells Mars Enterprise Men Fancied Inferior

I doubt if these two fine, active minds [President and Mrs. Roosevelt] have ever inquiried how it is they know what they know and think as they do. Nor have they ever thought of what they might have been if they had grown up in an entirely different culture. They have the disposition of all politicians world over to deal only with made opinion. They have never inquired how it is that opinion is made. By H.g.wells President Roosevelt Mrs Fine Active

Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came. It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then - nothingness, no visible thing at all! By H.g.wells Bar Spectacles Gasped Removed Bandages

We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. By H.g.wells Man Space Learned Regard Planet

The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity. By H.g.wells Fire Sleeper Stirring Dreams Opportunity

The too perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, a general dwindling in size strength and intelligence. By H.g.wells Upperworlders Degeneration Intelligence Perfect Security

The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china. By H.g.wells Deportment China People Felt Aware

[A novel by Henry James] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently place, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. By H.g.wells James Henry Altar Church Lit

If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement ... collapsed like a house of cards. By H.g.wells Fall Eden Manner Parents Animals

I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day By H.g.wells Day Surveyed Broad View World

There is still something in everything I do that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it, but always I fall short of the things I dream. By H.g.wells Makes Dissatisfied Challenges Effort Defeats

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he chooses to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away. Between By H.g.wells Fearenside Silas Durgan Stranger View

The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. In these favorable conditions, they built a character - meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could nowhere have existed except in India. By H.g.wells India History Happier Fierce Centuries

The history of mankind henceforth is a history of more or less blind endeavours to conceive, a common purpose in relation to which all men may live happily, and to create and develop a common consciousness and a common stock of knowledge which may serve and illuminate that purpose. In a vast variety of forms this is appearance of kings and priests and magic men was happening all over the world under Neolithic conditions. Everywhere mankind was seeking where knowledge and mastery and magic power might reside; everywhere individual men were willing, honestly or dishonestly, to rule, to direct, or to be the magic beings who would reconcile the confusions of the community. Another By H.g.wells Common History Purpose Men Magic

You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel - a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady By H.g.wells Feel Thirst Imagine Craving Rest

For the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity - indeed there is no necessity - for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. By H.g.wells Family Necessity State Age Woman

Heresies are experiments in man's unsatisfied search for truth. By H.g.wells Heresies Truth Experiments Man Unsatisfied

The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard it ceases to be anything more than 'the gang in possession,' and its days are numbered. By H.g.wells Emotions Legal True Strength Rulers

I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do. By H.g.wells Invisible Beginning Realise Extraordinary Advantage

The history of mankind," said Dreed, "has been a history of betrayals, the perennial betrayal of the common man by the men he has trusted.""By the men the lazy, haphazard, childish oaf was too wilfully stupid to mistrust," said Bodisham. "The history of mankind from the very beginning has been a history of over-trusted trustees, corrupted by their unchecked opportunities. By H.g.wells History Men Dreed Bodisham Haphazard

We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity. By H.g.wells Necessity Keen Grindstone Pain

War is a curtain of dense black fabric across all the hopes and kindliness of mankind. Yet always it has let through some gleams of light, and notI am not dreamingit grows threadbare, and here and there and at a thousand points the light is breaking through. By H.g.wells War Mankind Curtain Dense Black

This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books, - bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. By H.g.wells God Mood Rarely Multitudes Books

She wanted to live. She was vehemently impatient - she did not clearly know for what - to do, to be, to experience. And experience was slow in coming. All the world about her seemed to be - how can one put it? - in wrappers, like a house when people leave it in the summer. The blinds were all drawn, the sunlight kept out, one could not tell what colors these gray swathings hid. She wanted to know. And there was no intimation whatever that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or doors be opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a blaze of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit. Dim souls flitted about her, not only speaking but it would seem even thinking in undertones ... During By H.g.wells Live Wanted Experience Blinds Impatient

Until a man has found God, he begins at no beginning and works to no end. By H.g.wells God End Man Found Begins

Human society is based on want. Life is based on want. Wild-eyed visionaries may dream of a world without need. Cloud-cuckoo-land. It can't be done. By H.g.wells Based Human Society Life Wildeyed

There are no circumstances in the world that determined action cannot alter, unless, perhaps, they are the walls of a prison cell, and even those will dissolve and change, I am told, into the infirmary compartment, at any rate, for the man who can fast with resolution. By H.g.wells Alter Cell Change Told Compartment

We should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit. By H.g.wells Rabbit Remember Repulsive Carnivorous Habits

Particularly nauseous were the blank expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. By H.g.wells Omnibuses Nauseous Blank Expressionless Faces

Aren't we all agreed about those thingsin theory?'In theory, yes,' said Bobby. 'But not in reality. If every one really wanted to abolish the difference of rich and poor it would be as easy as pie to find a way. There's always a way to everything if you want to do it enough. But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but wanting to have no rich and poor any more isn't real wanting; it is just a matter of pious sentiment. And so it is about war. We don't want to be poor and we don't want to be hurt or worried by war, but that's not wanting to end those things. By H.g.wells Theory Bobby Poor Wanting Things

One of those pertinacious tempers that would warm every day to a white heat and never again cool to forgiveness. By H.g.wells Forgiveness Pertinacious Tempers Warm Day

The future is the shape of things to come. By H.g.wells Future Shape Things

Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence began in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau - and for what? It was the wantonness that stirred me. By H.g.wells Moreau Long Humanity Lived Died

The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it ... Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity. By H.g.wells Islamic Teachings Behavior Tolerance Left

The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and infinitely more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the people of that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an effective balance. They did not realize that this age of relative good fortune was an age of immense but temporary opportunity for their kind. They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no moral responsibility. They did not realize that this security of progress was a thing still to be won or lost, and that the time to win it was a time that passed. They went about their affairs energetically enough, and yet with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one troubled over the real dangers of mankind. By H.g.wells Balance Progress Time Suspected Age

It isn't a natural thing to keep on worrying about the morality of one's material prosperity. These are proclivities superinduced by modern conditions of the conscience. There is a natural resistance in every healthy human being to such distressful heart-searchings. By H.g.wells Prosperity Natural Thing Worrying Morality

A biography should be a dissection and demonstration of how a particular human being was made and worked. By H.g.wells Worked Biography Dissection Demonstration Human

But there are times when the little cloud spreads, until it obscures the sky. And those times I look around at my fellow men and I am reminded of some likeness of the beast-people, and I feel as though the animal is surging up in them. And I know they are neither wholly animal nor holy man, but an unstable combination of both. By H.g.wells Spreads Sky Times Cloud Obscures

How small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles. By H.g.wells Miles Small Vastest Human Catastrophes

In all the round world there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. By H.g.wells Meat Round World Slaughterhouses Stand

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure. By H.g.wells Kodak Thought Underworld Leisure Flashed

What are the asses at now?" He By H.g.wells Asses

The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it? By H.g.wells America Plans Deal Russian Successive

I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel.With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away. By H.g.wells Martian Mind Days Dethronement Master

The real method of popular expression in Italy in those days was not the comitia tributa, but the strike and insurrection, the righteous and necessary methods of all cheated or suppressed peoples. We have seen in our own days in Great Britain a decline in the prestige of parliamentary government and a drift towards unconstitutional methods on the part of the masses through exactly the same cause, through the incurable disposition of politicians to gerrymander the electoral machine until the community is driven to explosion. For By H.g.wells Italy Methods Days Tributa Insurrection

Yet the voice was indisputable. It continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man. It By H.g.wells Indisputable Voice Man Continued Swear

Direct popular government of a state larger than a city state had already failed therefore in Italy, because as yet there was no public education, no press, and no representative system; it had failed though these mere mechanical difficulties, before the first Punic War. By H.g.wells Italy War Punic State Failed

No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else's document. By H.g.wells Document Compulsion World Stronger Urge

Now whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. By H.g.wells Lot Lord Weak Thinking Religion

A real value of a talk is not how it goes but what it leaves in your memory, which is one reason perhaps why dialogues in books are always so boring to read. By H.g.wells Memory Read Real Talk Leaves

Very much indeed of what we call moral education is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion. By H.g.wells Instinct Pugnacity Selfsacrifice Emotion Call

The thing they wanted they called the Vote, but that demand so hollow, so eyeless, had all the terrifying effect of a mask. Behind that mask was a formless invincible discontent with the lot of womanhood. It wanted, - it was not clear what it wanted, but whatever it wanted, all the domestic instincts of mankind were against admitting there was anything it could want. By H.g.wells Vote Wanted Hollow Eyeless Mask

You see," I said, "I'm a socialist. I don't think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of everyone else. By H.g.wells Socialist World Made Small Minority

Down the mountain we shall go and down the passes, and as the valleys open the world will open, Utopia, where men and women are happy and laws are wise, and where all that is tangled and confused in human affairs has been unravelled and made right. By H.g.wells Utopia Open Passes Wise Mountain

This World Youth movement claims to represent and affect the politico-social activities of a grand total of forty million adherents - under the age of thirty ... It may play an important and increasing role in the consolidation of a new world order. By H.g.wells Youth World Adherents Thirty Movement

I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view - get hot, juicy, red - like a grilled chop. Get me on that machine and I have to go. I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it. By H.g.wells Exercise Gentle Botanise Notice Scenery

Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations. By H.g.wells Great Smaller Considerations Strange Ideas

Few people who know of the work of Langley, Lilienthal, Pilcher, Maxim and Chanute but will be inclined to believe that long before the year 2000 A.D., and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe and sound. By H.g.wells Lilienthal Pilcher Langley Maxim Chanute

Every soul aboard stood at the bulwarks or on the seats of the steamer and stared at that distant shape, higher than the trees or church towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride. By H.g.wells Shape Higher Inland Stride Soul

Here was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the By H.g.wells Scene Foliage Ruins Beautiful Abundant

The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of wagons, and the staccato of hoofs. By H.g.wells Voices Wheels Wagons Hoofs Tumultuous

IBM is helping to greatly advance and expedite quality sampling while providing our project investigators peace of mind that the information they are gathering is securely stored and protected. By H.g.wells Ibm Protected Helping Greatly Advance

I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "The fact is, I'm all here:head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it? By H.g.wells Eye Voice Expostulation Fingers Aerial

Let your love be stronger than your hate or anger. By H.g.wells Anger Love Stronger Hate

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire. Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run. By H.g.wells Flame Forthwith Sprang Men Flashes

(...) I ducked once underwater and holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead, under the surface, for as long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me. By H.g.wells Agony Blundered Ahead Surface Ducked

Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth? By H.g.wells Eastend Earth Worker Live Artificial

To ride a bicycle properly is very like a love affair - chiefly it is a matter of faith. Believe you do it, and the thing is done; doubt, and, for the life of you, you cannot. By H.g.wells Affair Chiefly Faith Ride Bicycle

Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and - Duration. By H.g.wells Breadth Thickness Duration Length Time

But when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. By H.g.wells Walls Circumstance Grave Discovery Man

He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly. By H.g.wells England Incessantly Inordinately Proud Abused

It's chance, I tell you,' he interrupted, ' as everything is in a man's life. By H.g.wells Chance Interrupted Life Man

A large number of houses deserve to be burnt, most modern furniture, an overwhelming majority of pictures and books - one might go on for some time with the list. If our community was collectively anything more than a feeble idiot, it would burn most of London and Chicago, for example, an build sane and beautiful cities in the place of these pestilential heaps of private property. By H.g.wells Burnt Furniture Books List Large

But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours that's another matter. By H.g.wells Occidental Long Vigil Restless Watch

An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie. By H.g.wells Lie Animal Ferocious Cunning Real

My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. By H.g.wells Chemistry Astronomy Days Devote Reading

Very well," said the Voice, in a tone of relief. "Then I'm going to throw flints at you till you think differently. By H.g.wells Voice Relief Tone Differently Throw

The power of destruction which had once been the ultimate privilege of government was now the only power left in the worldand it was everywhere. By H.g.wells Power Destruction Ultimate Privilege Government

It may be that we exist and cease to exist in alternations, like the minute dots in some forms of toned printing or the succession of pictures on a cinema film. It may be that reality is an illusion of movement in an eternal, static, multidimensional universe. We may be only a story written on the ground of the inconceivable; the pattern on a rug beneath the feet of the incomprehensible. By H.g.wells Exist Alternations Film Cease Minute

The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the painin the world had found a voice By H.g.wells Doors Crying Sounded Louder Voice

What a huge inaccessible lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit. By H.g.wells Thought Transmit Huge Inaccessible Lumberroom

Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have. By H.g.wells Civilization Catastrophe Race Education Truth

Look at the way people have swung through Communism, Toryism, Liberalism -- in vast blocks. In my father's boyhood you were either a Liberal or a Conservative in England, and there you stuck, and in America you were a sturdy individualist Democrat or Republican from the cradle to the grave. But now the Voice does it -- the pervading voice. And just nowit's come to a point when a Voice -- putting it straight and clear. Straight and clear... By H.g.wells Toryism Liberalism Communism Voice Blocks

In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise ... By H.g.wells Martians Place Wonderful World Sex

We must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians ... were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space if fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit? By H.g.wells Wrought Animals Dodo Races Remember

By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain. By H.g.wells Martians Earth Comers Toll Billion

Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon, and then - fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work - What are these Martians? What are we? I answered, clearing my throat. By H.g.wells Permitted Things Gomorrah Work Martians

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative. By H.g.wells Adapt Perish Imperative Nature Inexorable

This mark men and women set on pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark of the beast from which they came. Pain! Pain and pleasure - they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust ... By H.g.wells Prendick Mark Beast Pain Men

This world is out of joint. It's broken up and I doubt if it'll heal. I doubt very much if it'll heal. We are in the beginning of the sickness of the world! By H.g.wells Heal Joint Doubt World Broken

The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge. By H.g.wells Girl Knowledge Art Ignoring Accomplishments

...whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and it's hope. I HOPE, or I would not live. By H.g.wells Hope Animal Find Solace Live

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. By H.g.wells Grieved Dream Human Intellect Suicide

He is mad," said Kemp; "inhuman. He is pure selfishness. He thinks of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety. I have listened to such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking ... . He has wounded men. He will kill them unless we can prevent him. He will create a panic. Nothing can stop him. He is going out now - furious! By H.g.wells Kemp Inhuman Mad Selfishness Pure

There's truths you have to grow into. By H.g.wells Truths Grow

With wine and food, the confidence of my own table, and the necessity of reassuring my wife, I grew by insensible degrees courageous and secure. By H.g.wells Food Table Wife Secure Wine

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations. By H.g.wells Athenian Nations Democracy Suffered Narrowness

But you can't be too careful of these strange new ideas and new things. You must not tamper with them. If you try to understand them, they may entangle and get hold of you, and then where will you be? Hide your mind from them, and hide them from your mind. Stick to the plain common sense of life. There will always be a tomorrow rather like today. At least so far there always has been a fairly similar tomorrow. Once or twice lately there have been jolts ... Try not to notice these jolts. 'It is no good meeting trouble halfway. By H.g.wells Things Careful Strange Ideas Mind

Common sense and every material reality insisted upon the unification of human life throughout the planet and the socialisation of its elementary needs, and pitted against that was the fact that every authority, every institution, every established way of thinking and living was framed to preserve the advantages of the ruling and possessing minority and the separate sovereignty of the militant states that had been evolved within the vanished circumstances of the past. By H.g.wells Common Authority Institution Past Sense

A shambling, hairy, brutish, but probably very cunning creature with a big brain behind; so someone, I think it was Sir Harry Johnston, has described Homo Neanderthalensis. To this day we must still use similar terms to describe the soul of the politician. The statesman has still to oust the politician from his lairs and weapon heaps. History has still to become a record of human dignity. Finance By H.g.wells Johnston Neanderthalensis Sir Harry Homo

Educate the Russian or the American or the Englishman or the Irishman or Frenchman or any real northern European except German, and you get the Anarchist, that is to say the man who dreams of order without organisation - of something beyond organisation ... By H.g.wells Organisation German Anarchist Russian American

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea. By H.g.wells Sea Confess Imagination Refuses Sort

Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow. By H.g.wells Victoria Great Life Passing Accumulating

As night goes round the Earth always there are hundreds of thousands of people who should be sleeping, lying awake, fearing a bully, fearing a cruel competition, dreading lest they cannot make good, ill of some illness they cannot comprehend, distressed by some irrational quarrel, maddened by some thwarted instinct or some suppressed perverted desire. By H.g.wells Fearing Earth Sleeping Lying Awake

All the English flowers came from Shakespeare. I don't know what we did before his time.The Secret Places of the Heart By H.g.wells Shakespeare English Heart Flowers Secret

No man goes out upon a novel expedition without misgivings.The Secret Places of The Heart (Kindle Loc 245) By H.g.wells Heart Kindle Loc Secret Places

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP By H.g.wells Click Sign

The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action. By H.g.wells Action Anglosaxon Genius Parliamentary Government

I am just a human being - solid, needing food and drink, needing covering too - But I'm invisible. You see? Invisible. Simple idea. Invisible. By H.g.wells Needing Solid Invisible Drink Human

I think that it [the Church] stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonisms in existence. Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. It presents many faces towards the world, but everywhere it is systematic in its fight against freedom. By H.g.wells Church Stands Mankind Hostile Mental

For neither do men live nor die in vain. Here By H.g.wells Vain Men Live Die

States organized for war will make war as surely as hens will lay eggs ... By H.g.wells States Eggs War Organized Make

Over me, about me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal, that which was before the beginning and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the silence, - the infinite and final Night of space. By H.g.wells Eternal Night Closing Embracing Nearer

I perceived that I was hungry, and prepared to clamber out of the hammock which, very politely anticipating my intention, twisted round and deposited me upon the floor. By H.g.wells Hungry Intention Twisted Floor Perceived

I had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceive the scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. This By H.g.wells Mind Man Realised Nose Eye

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow. By H.g.wells Tomorrow Crisis Today Joke

I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. By H.g.wells Suppose Suicide Holds Pistol Skull

Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. By H.g.wells Mind Age Suddenly Humour Situation

Anthropology has been compared to a great region, marked out indeed as within the sphere of influence of science, but unsettled and for the most part unsubdued. Like all such hinterland sciences, it is a happy hunting-ground for adventurers. By H.g.wells Anthropology Region Marked Unsubdued Compared

To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man - the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become - this. By H.g.wells Magic Thing Transcend Beheld Unclouded

And there it was, on a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd of ignorant and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed and unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himself invisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career. By H.g.wells Griffin Tawdry Illlighted Bedroom Surrounded

Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world. By H.g.wells Utopian Credible World Business Make

The great trouble with you Americans is that you are still under the influence of that second-rate - shall I say third-rate? - mind, Karl Marx. By H.g.wells Americans Secondrate Thirdrate Mind Karl

Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you. By H.g.wells Fine Hospitality Man Travelled Innumerable

Instead of offering me a Garibaldi biscuit, she asked me with that faint lisp of hers, to 'have some squashed flies, George'. By H.g.wells George Garibaldi Biscuit Flies Offering

It is the going out from oneself that is love and not the accident of its return. It is the expedition, whether it fail or succeed. By H.g.wells Return Oneself Love Accident Expedition

They did not think politics was a great constructive process, they thought it was a kind of dog-fight. They wanted fun, they wanted spice, they wanted hits, they wanted also a chance to say "'Ear, 'ear!" in an intelligent and honourable manner and clap their hands and drum with their feet. The great constructive process in history gives so little scope for clapping and drumming and saying "'Ear, 'ear!" One might as well think of hounding on the solar system. By H.g.wells Ear Wanted Constructive Dogfight Great

A downtrodden class ... will never be able to make an effective protest until it achieves solidarity. By H.g.wells Class Downtrodden Solidarity Make Effective

Extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. By H.g.wells God Extended Hands Sky Began

The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. By H.g.wells Time Traveller Believed Reserve Ambush

You're a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You're always fearing and fancying. We're on the edge of things. I'm bound to cut my throat tomorrow. I'm going to have a damned Bank Holiday tonight. By H.g.wells Prendick Prig Ass Solemn Silly

All we can do is to prepare for a universal language that will go on changing for ever. We don't know everything. We aren't final. I wish we could make that statement a part of the Fundamental Law. By H.g.wells Prepare Universal Language Changing Law

The man who raises a fist has run out of ideas. By H.g.wells Ideas Man Raises Fist Run

The ethical system that will dominate the world-state will be shaped primarily to favor the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity - beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds - and to check the procreation of base and servile type. By H.g.wells Procreation Beautiful Humanity Bodies Clear

Even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man. By H.g.wells Gratitude Man Mind Strength Mutual

I feel to think, he thinks to feel. It is I and my kind that have the wider range, because we can be impersonal as well as personal. We can escape ourselves. By H.g.wells Feel Range Personal Kind Wider

Within he felt that faint stirring of derision for the whole business of life which is the salt of the American mentality. Outwardly they are sentimental and enthusiastic and inwardly they are profoundly cynical. By H.g.wells American Mentality Felt Faint Stirring

Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this Earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars. By H.g.wells Life Forever Earth Afresh Eager

Find the thing you want to do most intensely, make sure that's it, and do it with all your might. If you live, well and good. If you die, well and good. Your purpose is done By H.g.wells Good Find Intensely Make Thing

But, as I say, I was toofull of excitement and (a true saying, though those who have neverknown danger may doubt it) too desperate to die. By H.g.wells Die Toofull Excitement True Neverknown

The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at once enormously destructive and entirely indecisive. By H.g.wells Indecisive Peculiarity Aerial Warfare Enormously

You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception. By H.g.wells Carefully Follow Accepted Geometry Instance

We have done much in the last few years to destroy the severe limitations of Victorian delicacy, and all of us, from princesses and prime-ministers' wives downward, talk of topics that would have been considered quite gravely improper in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, Who is it at the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and involuntary submissions for your freedom and magnificence? This, indeed, is almost the ultimate surviving indecency. By H.g.wells Victorian Delicacy Wives Downward Talk

Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands. By H.g.wells Impossible Obvious People Early Twentieth

He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures that stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. By H.g.wells Began Realize Fight Happily Creatures

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change. By H.g.wells Nature Useless Intelligence Appeals Habit

I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days. By H.g.wells Days Civilised Dinner Eat Strange

No place is safe - no place is at peace. There is no place where a women and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead - dripping death - dripping death! By H.g.wells Place Peace Safe Dripping Death

But by that time Lady Harman had acquired the habit of reading and the habit of thinking over what she read, and from that it is an easy step to thinking over oneself and the circumstances of one's own life. The one thing trains for the other. By H.g.wells Habit Thinking Lady Harman Read

Democracy's ceremonial, its feast, it's great function, is the election. By H.g.wells Democracy Ceremonial Feast Function Election

Could it be possible, I thought, that such a thing as the vivisection of men was carried on here? The question shot like lightning across a tumultuous sky; and suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensed into a vivid realisation of my own danger. By H.g.wells Thought Thing Vivisection Men Carried

... growing a little tiresome on account of some mysterious internal discomfort that the local practitioner diagnosed as imagination By H.g.wells Growing Imagination Tiresome Account Mysterious

The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. By H.g.wells Books Brown Charred Rags Hung

The cat, which is a solitary beast, is single minded and goes its way alone, but, the dog, like his master, is confused in his mind. By H.g.wells Cat Beast Dog Master Mind

Why did every human concern clog itself up in a tangle of routines, formalities, disciplines, imperatives? Why couldn't one be free? Really free? Guarding one's freedom, wasn't freedom at all. Why couldn't one win one's freedom for good and all, and get on with life? By H.g.wells Formalities Disciplines Imperatives Routines Free

I do not know if hell is hot or cold, or what sort of place hell may be, but this I surely know, that if there is any hell at all it will be badly lit. And it will taste like a train. By H.g.wells Hell Cold Lit Hot Sort

There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers. By H.g.wells Change Intelligence Dangers Animals Partake

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it. By H.g.wells Book Surprise Attack Difficulties Element

There is no more evil thing in this world than race prejudice, none at all. [ ... ] It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty, and abomination than any other sort of error in the world. By H.g.wells Prejudice Cruelty World Evil Thing

If we suppose a sufficient righteousness and intelligence in men to produce presently, from the tremendous lessons of history, an effective will for a world peacethat is to say, an effective will for a world law under a world governmentfor in no other fashion is a secure world peace conceivablein what manner may we expect things to move towards this end? ... It is an educational task, and its very essence is to bring to the minds of all men everywhere, as a necessary basis for world cooperation, a new telling and interpretation, a common interpretation, of history. By H.g.wells