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dbdaab7
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You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.
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Nevil Shute |
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99a9f9b
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It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us."
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Nevil Shute |
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c689765
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I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do Please be careful." "Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over."
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Nevil Shute |
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2eccdcd
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Without work men are utterly undone.
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Nevil Shute |
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d28cab4
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I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.
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Nevil Shute |
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89bda22
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She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done." "That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it."
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Nevil Shute |
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7836d5a
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Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you're going to lose before you start. It's fun just playing them.
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losing
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Nevil Shute |
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ff48762
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Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.
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Nevil Shute |
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fd54d72
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If what they say is right we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.
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Nevil Shute |
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a219f5c
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It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.
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Nevil Shute |
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cd5fcf8
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You know," he said, "now that I've got used to the idea, I think I'd rather have it this way. We've all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you're never ready, because you don't know when it's coming. Well, now we do know, and there's nothing to be done about it. I kind of like that. I kind of like the thought that I'll be fit and well up till the end of August and then - home. I'd rather have it..
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Nevil Shute |
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0316cee
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There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today.
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labor
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Nevil Shute |
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72cc154
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The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work.
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Nevil Shute |
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f3988aa
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The news did not trouble her particularly; all news was bad, like wage demands, strikes, or war, and the wise person paid no attention to it. What was important was that it was a bright, sunny day; her first narcissi were in bloom, and the daffodils behind them were already showing flower buds.
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Nevil Shute |
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0ae2d35
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Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it.
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Nevil Shute |
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ba3aec5
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Men' s souls are naturally inclined to covetousness; but if ye be kind towards women and fear to wrong tgem, God is well acquainted with what ye do.
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Nevil Shute |
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53e8e10
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You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for falling in love.
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Nevil Shute |
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f7174c3
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She lived in the dream world of unreality, or else she would not admit reality; he did not know. In any case, he loved her as she was. It might never be used, but it would give her pleasure to have it.
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coping
love
doom
last-days
unreality
post-apocalyptic
delusion
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Nevil Shute |
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b1bcfbf
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I have been asked sometimes what led me to the Persian Gulf, what instinct told me that I could build up a business there. It's really perfectly simple. If you go to the hottest and most uncomfortable place on the map you'll find there's not a lot of competition;
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Nevil Shute |
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67d62d3
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I never was in such a horrid office . . . It's not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it?
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Nevil Shute |
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2b9fe73
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Here they go cruising for a fortnight up in parts where everyone is dead of radiation, and all that they can catch is measles!
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illness
humor
measles
radioactivity
submarines
disease
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Nevil Shute |
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c2948d8
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Until we're dead, we Service people, the world will always be in danger of another war. We had too good a time in the last one. We'll none of us come out into the open and admit it. It might be better for us if we did. [...] For our generation, the war years were the best time of our lives, not because they were war years but because we were young. The best years of our lives happened to be war years. Everyone looks back at the time when th..
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youth
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Nevil Shute |
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0aa485e
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You could have done something with newspapers. We didn't do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no Government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we'd been wise enough.
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sex-sells
media
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Nevil Shute |
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8110553
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When you and I are dead, and all the rest of us who served in the last war, in all the countries," she said, "there'll be a chance of world peace. Not till then."
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Nevil Shute |
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5242a6e
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People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had, she said quietly, staring into the embers. they don't know what it was like, not being in a camp.
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fiction
world-war-2
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Nevil Shute |
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4b551ea
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He was one of that great class of Englishmen who love their wives and trust them unquestioningly with their money and their honour, but are apt to hedge a little over their motor-cars.
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Nevil Shute |
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340801d
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All those cities, all those fields and farms, with nobody, and nothing left alive. Just nothing there. I simply can't take it in.
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Nevil Shute |
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50214de
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it was so beautiful', he said. 'the Three Pagodas Pass must be one of the loveliest places in the world. you've got this broad valley with the river running down it, and the jungle forest, and the mountains....we used to sit by the river and watch the sun setting behind the mountains, sometimes, and say what a marvellous place it would be to come to for a holiday. however terrible a prison camp may be, it makes a difference if its beautiful..
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fiction
world-war-2
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Nevil Shute |
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8e6c776
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You don't feel any different as you get older. Only, you can't do so much.
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Nevil Shute |
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dff89fd
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An American, a soldier of fortune by profession. Wherever there is trouble in the world the Dwights of all nations foregather. There are not very many of them, thirty or forty perhaps, and they are all supremely competent men because the others have been killed.
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Nevil Shute |
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211c3cd
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We are not like that, we engineers. We are men of understanding and of education, on whom is laid responsibility that men may travel in these aeroplanes as safely as if they were sitting by the well in the cool of the evening.
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Nevil Shute |
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9ab14a0
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Half a thou too small," he said. "The difference between Right and Wrong. Half a thou bigger, and it'ld be Right. As it is, it's Wrong, and you can't cheat about it." He smiled again. "Too bad when God gives you the mind of an Inspector, isn't it?"
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Nevil Shute |
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5c78e5a
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When a good man employs others he becomes a slave to the job, for the job is the guarantee for the security of many men.
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Nevil Shute |
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5f4fb61
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Many evils spring from power," he said. "Even from the power to do good. All power corrupts, and the intention to do good has little influence on the corruption. Either my words will last after me and be believed by men, or else they won't. Yet if one thing were required to kill them certainly, it is that my words should be spread after my death by the power of money. No teaching could survive a campaign of paid advertising."
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Nevil Shute |
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36cfd34
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I still think Connie was a human man, a very, very good one--but a man. I have been wrong in my judgments many times before; if now I am ignorant and blind, I'm sorry, but it's no new thing. If that should be the case though, it means that I have had great privileges in my life, perhaps more so than any man alive today. Because it means that on the fields and farms of England, on the airstrips of the desert and the jungle, in the hangars of..
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Nevil Shute |
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0f1d751
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I want to drink hard liquor, as you call it, before lunch. I've got a mouth like the bottom of the parrot's cage. You wouldn't want me to throw a screaming fit in front of all your officers.
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humor
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Nevil Shute |
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ea5b2a5
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Only by an act of treachery to those who believe in us can either of us escape.
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Nevil Shute |
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34d702a
|
Professor O'Leary was Professor of Mediaeval Literature at Ann Arbor University in Michigan, just outside Detroit.
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Nevil Shute |
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f99a095
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Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this," he said. The scientist said, "That's absolutely and precisely right."
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Nevil Shute |
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5b14113
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She had known for some time that his wife and family were very real to him, more real by far than the half-life in a far corner of the world that had been forced upon him since the war.
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Nevil Shute |
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31b0e3c
|
I think dogs need our prayers more than people. We know that God looks after people when they die and that Daddy and Mummy and Bill are all right, but we don't know that about dogs.
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Nevil Shute |
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bcaa232
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He was just entering the club ahead of me, a tall and rather emaciated man of about seventy, a little unsteady on his feet. He tripped over the doormat as he went in and stumbled forward; the hall porter jumped out and caught him by the elbow.
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Nevil Shute |
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2300949
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Leave-takings are stupid things, and best forgotten about as quickly as possible.
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Nevil Shute |
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49c148c
|
It was a gambler's action, but his whole life had probably been made up of gambles; it could hardly be otherwise in the outback.
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life
inspirational
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Nevil Shute |