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b57aee7
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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16bfca7
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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3dce367
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Only people who are well off can be - complex.
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H.G. Wells |
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dd44e3f
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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
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sleep
work
work-life-balance
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H.G. Wells |
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1c833f4
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This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then comes languor and decay.
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H.G. Wells |
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b77372c
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the voice was indisputable. It continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man.
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H.G. Wells |
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ec3fda1
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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-breez..
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vivisection
islands
pity
horror
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H.G. Wells |
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138d3b4
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I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams.
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H.G. Wells |
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a50637e
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Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being
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H.G. Wells |
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ed3c31d
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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4db934c
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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 th..
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H.G. Wells |
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e685d61
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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8b0fc5e
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I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.
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pain
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H.G. Wells |
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c195bf7
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Room to swing a cat, it seemed was absolutely essential. It was an infrequent but indispensable operation.
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H.G. Wells |
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5608b98
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For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive.
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H.G. Wells |
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5717061
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So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear."
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H.G. Wells |
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78ca298
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Everyone seemed eager to talk at once, and the result was Babel.
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H.G. Wells |
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7d63ed2
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No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or 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?
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H.G. Wells |
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05828c9
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Very well," said the Voice, in a tone of relief. "Then I'm going to throw flints at you till you think differently."
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stubbornness
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H.G. Wells |
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8b66508
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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 miser..
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prophesy
dystopia
science-fiction
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H.G. Wells |
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2539cb2
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Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer 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.
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time
the-war-of-the-worlds
space
science-fiction
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H.G. Wells |
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a5f2b5f
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If it were not for collectors England would be full, so to speak, of rare birds and wonderful butterflies, strange flowers and a thousand interesting things. But happily the collector prevents all that, either killing with his own hands or, by buying extravagantly, procuring people of the lower classes to kill such eccentricities as appear. ... Eccentricity, in fact, is immorality--think over it again if you do not think so now--just as ec..
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butterflies
flowers
england
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H.G. Wells |
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18013f6
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I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.
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H.G. Wells |
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827ab36
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We will peck them to death to-morrow, my dear.
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H.G. Wells |
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757197b
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It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war.
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madness
war
reason
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H.G. Wells |
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7b6be3b
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Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
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H.G. Wells |
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354e6b2
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The time traveller proceeded, "any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thicknessa and Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimentions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time."
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H.G. Wells |
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02dafac
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It's against reason," said Filby. "What reason?" said the Time Traveller." --
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the-time-machine
the-time-traveller
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H.G. Wells |
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8161539
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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.
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words
literature
writing
fonts
typeface
typography
power
letters
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H.G. Wells |
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67259c3
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You cannot imagine the strange colour-less delight of these intellectual desires.
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H.G. Wells |
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c8d6661
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we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.
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H.G. Wells |
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116afea
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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. I hope, or I could not live.
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hope
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H.G. Wells |
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a402ba5
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I felt amazingly confident,--it's not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass.
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H.G. Wells |
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642c6ab
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But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp!
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humor
cats
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H.G. Wells |
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f03c147
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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423db5d
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Can an instantaneous cube exist?' 'Don't follow you,' said Filby. 'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?' Filby became pensive. 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There a..
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H.G. Wells |
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301dabd
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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d6f3854
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One can't always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative.
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H.G. Wells |
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aef80e8
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I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings.
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H.G. Wells |
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5666f2b
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Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die.
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useless
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H.G. Wells |
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00f4c2a
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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 an..
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H.G. Wells |
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981c8ad
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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.
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H.G. Wells |
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5b8c3cb
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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 lon..
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philosophy
master
power
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H.G. Wells |
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8b2fc5f
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No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complac..
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H.G. Wells |