“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“No, it wasn't an accident, I didn't say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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 that way than go on as a sick manfrom when I'm seventy to when I'm ninety.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“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.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“All those cities, all those fields and farms, with nobody, and nothing left alive. Just nothing there. I simply can't take it in.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
“Into the world of romance, of make-belief and double brandies!”
― Nevil Shute, quote from On the Beach
Nevil Shute
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 17, 1899
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“Like any overt school of mysticism, a movement seeking to achieve a vicious goal has to invoke the higher mysteries of an incomprehensible authority. An unread and unreadable book serves this purpose. It does not count on men’s intelligence, but on their weaknesses, pretensions and fears. It is not a tool of enlightenment, but of intellectual intimidation. It is not aimed at the reader’s understanding, but at his inferiority complex.
An intelligent man will reject such a book with contemptuous indignation, refusing to waste his time on untangling what he perceives to be gibberish—which is part of the book’s technique: the man able to refute its arguments will not (unless he has the endurance of an elephant and the patience of a martyr). A young man of average intelligence—particularly a student of philosophy or of political science—under a barrage of authoritative pronouncements acclaiming the book as “scholarly,” “significant,” “profound,” will take the blame for his failure to understand. More often than not, he will assume that the book’s theory has been scientifically proved and that he alone is unable to grasp it; anxious, above all, to hide his inability, he will profess agreement, and the less his understanding, the louder his agreement—while the rest of the class are going through the same mental process. Most of them will accept the book’s doctrine, reluctantly and uneasily, and lose their intellectual integrity, condemning themselves to a chronic fog of approximation, uncertainty, self doubt. Some will give up the intellect (particularly philosophy) and turn belligerently into “pragmatic,” anti-intellectual Babbitts. A few will see through the game and scramble eagerly for the driver’s seat on the bandwagon, grasping the possibilities of a road to the mentally unearned.
Within a few years of the book’s publication, commentators will begin to fill libraries with works analyzing, “clarifying” and interpreting its mysteries. Their notions will spread all over the academic map, ranging from the appeasers, who will try to soften the book’s meaning—to the glamorizers, who will ascribe to it nothing worse than their own pet inanities—to the compromisers, who will try to reconcile its theory with its exact opposite—to the avant-garde, who will spell out and demand the acceptance of its logical consequences. The contradictory, antithetical nature of such interpretations will be ascribed to the book’s profundity—particularly by those who function on the motto: “If I don’t understand it, it’s deep.” The students will believe that the professors know the proof of the book’s theory, the professors will believe that the commentators know it, the commentators will believe that the author knows it—and the author will be alone to know that no proof exists and that none was offered.
Within a generation, the number of commentaries will have grown to such proportions that the original book will be accepted as a subject of philosophical specialization, requiring a lifetime of study—and any refutation of the book’s theory will be ignored or rejected, if unaccompanied by a full discussion of the theories of all the commentators, a task which no one will be able to undertake.
This is the process by which Kant and Hegel acquired their dominance. Many professors of philosophy today have no idea of what Kant actually said. And no one has ever read Hegel (even though many have looked at every word on his every page).”
― Ayn Rand, quote from Philosophy: Who Needs It
“The chronic fun of writing, the distraction of it, was not knowing.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Lost
“In case you didn't notice me, I'm the less attractive friend to the right.”
― Lauren Conrad, quote from L.A. Candy
“Purpose of life is unknown, and hence way to be is hidden from the eyes of living critters. Who can say if perhaps the schizophrenics are not correct? Mister, they take a brave journey. They turn away from mere things, which one may handle and turn to practical use; they turn inward to meaning. There, the black-night-without-bottom lies, the pit. Who can say if they will return? And if so, what will they be like, having glimpsed meaning? I admire them.”
― Philip K. Dick, quote from Martian Time-Slip
“They were happy, and free, and the endless sky awaited them. It was enough.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from Retribution Falls
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WiredBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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