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"In times of long established peace, when the tradition of generations has established the illusion of the profoundest human security, men's minds are not greatly distressed by grotesqueness and absurdity in their political forms. It is all part of the humour and the good-humour of life. When one believes that all the tigers in the jungle are dead, it is quite amusing to walk along the jungle paths in a dressing-gown with a fan instead of a gun."
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"Dickens writes that one of his characters, "listened to everything without seeming to, which showed he understood his business."
"The answers to your problems lie all around you. The keys to your self-discovery are waiting to be found in each sunset, each pair of eyes, each breath of fresh air. Listen to the symphony of life and you will hear yourself. Find the beauty of nature and you have found your soul."
"The thirty-plus years of marriage between the ceiling and the cement plaster showed signs of weakness by frequently developing cracks and holes."
"Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see."
"People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it."
"It's strange to see people you don't know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks."
"Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could never identify the murderer; she could barely describe him. She'd made a point of not looking at him!"
"I give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove. It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn't squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn't even blink."
"Hoyt was by himself right under one of the portable lights rigged up for the occasion. He had his hands thrust in his pockets, and he looked more serious than I'd ever seen him. There was something strange about the sight, and after a second I figured out why.It was one of the few times I'd ever seen Hoyt alone."
"If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects,' I said somewhat imperiously, because I wanted to change the subjects and also because a natural inclination does truly lead me to recognise my moods in the motionless suffering of things."
Explore more quotes by H. G. Wells
"The only path of escape he could conceive as yet for Lady Harman lay through the chivalry of some other man. That a woman could possibly rebel against one man without the sympathy and moral maintenance of another was still outside the range of Mr. Brumley's understanding. It is still outside the range of most men's understandings -- and of a great many women's."
"The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe-I have thought since-I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the stone wall."
"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."
"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."
"He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves."
"You have dwelt overmuch upon pain. Pain is a swift distress; it ends and is forgotten. Without memory and fear pain is nothing, a contradiction to be heeded, a warning to be taken. Without pain what would life become? Pain is the master only of craven men. It is in man's power to rule it."
"After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true."
"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."
"Oh, Lord! don't I know it's difficult! ... Don't I know that perhaps it's impossible! But it's the only way to do it. Therefore, I say, let's try to get it done. And everybody says, 'difficult, difficult,' and nobody lifts a finger to try. And the only real difficulty is that everybody for one reason or another says that it's difficult. It's against human nature. Granted! Every decent thing is. It's socialism. Who cares?"
"There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, andnot in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever ismore than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or Icould not live."
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