“Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, except uncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze of theories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but a fog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all its wonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, that seeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the most honest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that he must even doubt his very existence.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“They grew up, moulded by the harsh or kindly pressure of their fellows, to be either well nurtured, generous, sound, or mentally crippled, bitter, unwittingly vindictive.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Barren, barren and trivial are these words. But not barren the experience.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly “getting together,” but they never really got there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in company, in spite of the universal assumption of comradeship, these strange beings remained as remote from one another as the stars. For everyone searched his neighbour’s eyes for the image of himself, and never saw anything else. Or if he did, he was outraged and terrified.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds considered for a moment the possibility of resistance. In every case the attitude to disaster seemed to express itself in such terms as these:
"To retaliate would be to wound our communal spirit beyond cure. We choose rather to die. The theme of spirit that we have created must inevitably be broken short, whether by the ruthlessness of the invader or by our own resort to arms. It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“In every one of these "chrysalis" worlds thousands of millions of persons were flashing into existence, one after the other, to drift gropingly about for a few instants of cosmical time before they were extinguished. Most were capable, at least in some humble degree, of the intimate kind of community which is personal affection; but for nearly all of them a stranger was ever a thing to fear and hate. And even their intimate loving was inconstant and lacking in insight. Nearly always they were intent merely on seeking for themselves respite from fatigue or boredom, fear or hunger. Like my own race, they never fully awoke from the primeval sleep of the subman. Only a few here and there, now and then, were solaced, goaded, or tortured by moments of true wakefulness. Still fewer attained a clear and constant vision, even of some partial aspect of truth; and their half-truths they nearly always took to be absolute. Propagating their little partial truths, they bewildered and misdirected their fellow mortals as much as they helped them.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors æons ago.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“In the tide of these wild thoughts we checked our fancy, remembering that only on the rare grains called planets can life gain foothold, and that all this wealth of restless jewels was but a waste of fire.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“This microcosm was pregnant with the germ of a proper time and space, and all the kinds of cosmical beings. Within this punctual cosmos the myriad but not unnumbered physical centers of power, which men conceive vaguely as electrons, protons, and the rest, were at first coincident with one another. And they were dormant. The matter of ten million galaxies lay dormant in a point.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“I was a disembodied, wandering view-point.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Once more I struck out into the ocean of space, heading for another near star. Once more I was disappointed.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock and metal, whether man’s blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant tremor, or part of a universal movement!”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Very soon the heavens presented an extraordinary appearance, for all the stars directly behind me were now deep red, while those directly ahead were violet. Rubies lay behind me, amethysts ahead of me.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly towards the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story! As conditions deteriorated, and the movements of charity and state-charity became less and less able to cope with the increasing mass of unemployment and destitution, the new pariah-race became more and more psychologically useful to the hate-needs of the sacred, but still powerful, prosperous. The theory was spread that these wretched beings were the result of secret systematic race-pollution by riff-raff immigrants, and that they deserved no consideration whatever. They were therefore allowed only the basest forms of employment and the harshest conditions of work. When unemployment had become a serious social problem, practically the whole pariah stock was workless and destitute. It was of course easily believed that unemployment, far from being due to the decline of capitalism, was due to the worthlessness of the pariahs.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“In general the Star Maker, once he had ordained the basic principles of a cosmos and created its initial state, was content to watch the issue; but sometimes he chose to interfere, either by infringing the natural laws that he himself had ordained, or by introducing new emergent formative principles, or by influencing the minds of the creatures by direct revelation. This according to my dream, was sometimes done to improve a cosmical design; but, more often, interference was included in his original plan.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Had God,then,peopled the whole universe with our kind?Did he perhaps in very truth make us in his image?It was incredible.To ask such questions proved that I had lost mental balance.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“The true goal of human activity was the creation of a world-wide community of awakened and intelligently creative persons, related by mutual insight and respect, and by the common task of fulfilling the potentiality of the human spirit on earth.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“I shall describe one example of this kind of world, the greatest planet of a mighty sun. Situated, if I remember rightly, near the congested heart of the galaxy, this star was born late in galactic history, and it gave birth to planets when already many of the older stars were encrusted with smouldering lava. Owing to the violence of solar radiation its nearer planets had (or will have) stormy climates. On one of them a mollusc-like creature, living in the coastal shallows, acquired a propensity to drift in its boatlike shell on the sea’s surface, thus keeping in touch with its drifting vegetable food. As the ages passed, its shell became better adapted to navigation. Mere drifting was supplemented by means of a crude sail, a membrane extending from the creature’s back. In time this nautiloid type proliferated into a host of species. Some of these remained minute, but some found size advantageous, and developed into living ships. One of these became the intelligent master of this great world. The hull was a rigid, stream-lined vessel, shaped much as the nineteenth-century clipper in her prime, and larger than our largest whale. At the rear a tentacle or fin developed into a rudder, which was sometimes used also as a propeller, like a fish’s tail. But though all these species could navigate under their own power to some extent, their normal means of long-distance locomotion was their great spread of sail. The simple membranes of the ancestral type had become a system of parchment-like sails and bony masts and spars, under voluntary muscular control. Similarity to a ship was increased by the downward-looking eyes, one on each side of the prow. The mainmast-head also bore eyes, for searching the horizon. An organ of magnetic sensitivity in the brain afforded a reliable means of orientation. At the fore end of the vessel were two long manipulatory tentacles, which during locomotion were folded snugly to the flanks. In use they formed a very serviceable pair of arms.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Either God is the universe, or he is the flavour of creativity pervading all things.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Bvalltu, for such approximately was the philosopher’s name, the “11” being pronounced more or less as in 27 Welsh, Bvalltu effected a “cure” by merely inviting”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Barren, barren and trivial are these words.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“How should the little creatures, the awakened worlds, reach out to knowledge of the whole cosmos, and of the divine? Instead they must play their own part in the drama, and appreciate their own tragic end with godlike detachment and relish.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“lives were spent in pursuit of shadowy ends that remained ever just round the corner.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“Yet obscurely I saw that the ultimate cosmos was nevertheless lovely, and perfectly formed; and that every frustration and agony within it, however cruel to the sufferer, issued finally, without any miscarriage, in the enhanced lucidity of the cosmical spirit itself. In this sense at least no individual tragedy was in vain.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
“It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer.”
― Olaf Stapledon, quote from Star Maker
Olaf Stapledon
Born place: in Seacombe, Wallasey, Cheshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date May 10, 1886
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“If you ever seem to be sliding back into the very thing you’ve already been set free of, don’t even waste time getting discouraged. Often what seems like the same old thing coming back again may be a new layer surfacing that needs to come off. You’re not going backwards—you are going deeper.”
― Stormie Omartian, quote from The Power of a Praying Woman
“I was a fool, and I will always be a fool, and there will never, never, be a last day of school.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, quote from Honeybee: Poems Short Prose
“There is something about the defencelessness of youth that moves me to tears. Youth is so vulnerable. It is so ruthless--so sure. So generous and so demanding.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Five Little Pigs
“We’re still us,” I managed, blinking back tears.
“I don’t want there to be any awkwardness between us.”
“There won’t be. I won’t let there be if you won’t.”
“Good, Sweetheart. Good. We’ll just forget about this. It didn’t mean anything.”
― Samantha Young, quote from Until Fountain Bridge
“...too much time spent with books had not fitted her to be easy with herself, and other people.”
― Jo Baker, quote from Longbourn
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The Gravity Between...BookQuoters 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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