Wyndham Quotes

Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.

After that, nothing was the same. The very notion of my having a family turned vague, hard to credit, even weirdly jokey.

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.

Next morning, we drank endless cups of coffee in the airport restaurant…Suddenly wide-eyed, she stared past me: “Good grief, some of the people they let in here.

And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past.

The telegram was sealed – an old-fashioned touch, I thought, but then I’d never had a telegram before. I took my time opening it. I said nothing.

Will turned over the last words for a long time. Then he thought about the flashing message-light up in the kitchen.

Often I felt like two people. One went into the world and did the living for the other, who was stuck in an endless moment of knowing. Yesterday was today and hereon in.

All happened so damn fast,” he said. “’Phone call here after she arrived. Her mom and dad were just after leaving Halifax…ten cars, twelve maybe, made it onto the CBC News.

One thing, though, was for sure – here I was, alive, healthy but as unquiet in my way as they were in theirs. Transcendent equality. You’ve got to love it.

Nothing looked disturbed…yet everything felt that way. The guy was on the bed, calmness itself, as though he’d decided on a moment’s lie-down and just zizzed off.

Now I gazed out of my office window. Slowly the world was changing from old-gold to the deep purple which, in the words of that dreamy song Mum was fond of humming, bathes garden walls under the twinkle of starlight.

As I reached the door, the constable said, “Good luck in Canada, son.” For a second I expected his voice to morph into Uncle Sid’s as he urged me to give his love to Rose Marie and the Mounties.

The essential quality of life is living' the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it.

Some quotations," said Zellaby, "are greatly improved by lack of context.

If you run away from a thing just because you don't like it, you don't like what you find either.

Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.

She needed him to be him. Even if he could not be hers.

Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.

I didn't think I should die but I did not know how I would Live.

Why should I? I've done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed - I am only beaten

Knowing makes all the difference... It's the difference between just trying to keep alive, and having something to live for

It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's still a poorer pass to have no one to depend on.

There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes.

Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.

We all have our youthful follies, embarassing to recall -- but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.

He would not give her up,he could not.For the first time in his life he'd found someone who filled all the empty spaces in his heart

What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island?

Apparently Lord Wyndham did regularly donate books to various museums around London. They were usually ones which he had collected earlier, but which were no longer of interest to him or his associates. Irene twitched at the very notion. Give books away? How very frivolous, she finally said.

If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does.

It is the tragedy of a distinguished mind and a generous nature that have gone unappreciated in a conventional, unimaginative world. A victim of men's incomprehension of women, a symptom of women's mistrust of men.

I shall pray to God to send charity to this hideous world, and sympathy for the weak, and love for the unhappy and unfortunate. I shall ask Him if is indeed His will that a child should suffer and its soul be damned for a little blemish on the body....And I shall pray Him, too, that the hearts of the self-righteous may be broken...

Most people […] prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake: if there is one, it's always due to something or somebody else

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.

Why should they be afraid of us? We aren’t hurting them,’ she broke in. “I’m not sure that I know why,’ I told her. ‘But they are. It’s a feel-thing not a think-thing. And the more stupid they are, the more like everyone else they think everyone ought to be. And once they get afraid they become cruel and want to hurt people who are different –

The dove is not a coward to fear the hawk; it is simply wise.

…after all, what is a planet but an island in space?

Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.

So you're in love with her?' she went on. A word again ... When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one's own, and each has taken too much of the other ever to be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart, enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another ... When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists. 'We love one another,' I said.

The clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital

In my experience,’ he told me, ‘if you run away from a thing just because you don’t like it you don’t know what you find either. Now running to a thing, that’s a different matter, but what would you want to run to?

Miss Wyndham feigned an illness, sneaked out of the house, and walked the London streets unaccompanied for most of the night. At the very least, I’d say she’s a better influence on Miss Kent than Lady Kent is.

It is because nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation.

I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-looking man... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist. [on Brit poet Percy Wyndham Lewis]

Art is the expression of an enormous preference.

Darling, whose book is this to be?" "Ostensibly yours, my sweet" "I see -- rather like my life since I met you?" "Yes darling

Instead of the vast organization to exploit the weakness of the Many, should we not possess one for the exploitation of the intelligence of the Few?

Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative—an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary... That day I had learned that it was much more. It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary and play tricks with the mind. Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care. It showed one as an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the time its chance to frighten and frighten horribly—that was what loneliness was really trying to do; and that was what one must never let it do...

When almost half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of order, reorientation is no five-minute business.

You're Beau Wyndham! Well, I'll be damned!' 'The prospect,' said Sir Richard, bored, 'leaves me unmoved

I wish you always the joyous summer you deserve and blame you not for fleeing the stark winter you saw in me. -Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham (in his letter to Lady Alicia)

But not she. Her eternity is an article of her faith. Great wars and disasters can ebb and flow, races rise and fall, empires wither with suffering and death, but these are superficialities: she, woman, is perpetual, essential; she will go on for ever.

... the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith.

Personal honesty takes time to assert itself - if it is ever allowed to.

You'd expect her to see reason,' he muttered. I don't see why. Most of us don't - we see habit. She'll oppose any modification, reasonable or not, that conflicts with her previously trained feelings of what is right and polite - and be quite honestly convinced that she's showing steadfast strength of character. . .

Nobody is going to be muddle-headed enough to confuse ignorance with innocence now - it's too important. Nor is ignorance going to be cute or funny anymore. It is going to be dangerous, very dangerous.

You don't seriously suggest that thet're talking when they make that rattling noise.

It was all conveyed by the nicest, almost indetectably refined blend of sympathy and bitchiness...

There was a huge difference between dislike and disregard.

We've got to believe that God is sane, Davie boy. We'd be lost indeed if we didn't do that.

I'm a reliable witness, you're a reliable witness, practically all God's children are reliable witnesses in their own estimation--which makes it funny how such different ideas of the same affair get about.

It wasn‟t even desire. It was far more than that. It was love. Love. With a capital L and swirly script and hearts and flowers and whatever else the angels— and yes, all those annoying little cupids—wished to use for embellishment.

But it is an inescapable conclusion that life has to be dynamic and not static. Change is bound to come one way or another.

I suppose a book is still a book, even if no one but the author and his wife reads it," she said.

They haven't God's word like they thought: God doesn't have any last word. If He did He'd be dead. But He isn't dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that's alive

Many great writers address audiences who do not exist; to address passionately and sometimes with very great wisdom people who do not exist has this advantage—that there will always be a group of people who, seeing a man shouting apparently at somebody or other, and seeing nobody else in sight, will think it is they who are being addressed.

And again there are no words. Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body's love, but beyond that they fail clumsily. My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance - and the difference - between us dwindled and vanished. We could meet, mingle, and blend. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the word ...

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive—yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk—the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable.

While overseeing tonight’s dinner party, I finally found myself in the presence of Mr. Edwards’s famed wit when he asked me whether I had visited the zoo to see the puffins. Somehow Miss Wyndham was the one forced to leave the house.

My protective coloration isn't intended to deceive you, my sweet. It is intended to deceive me.

I'm quite sure there is a simple way. The trouble is that simple ways so often come out of such complicated research.

The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising themselves.

In this room,in this minite,she was his everything

Artists put as much vitality and delight into their saintliness and escape out as most men do their escapes into similar places from respectable existence.

There must, I think, be a great many people who go around just longing to be baffled...

Grace-" He scowled, then laughed. "What the devil is your middle name?" "Catriona." she whispered. "Grace Catriona Eversleigh," he said, loud and sure, "I love you.

It’s not my fault if I’m not any good at things like that.” “I’ll differ there,” Coker told her. “It’s not only your fault—it’s a self-created fault. Moreover, it’s an affectation to consider yourself too spiritual to understand anything mechanical. It is a petty and a very silly form of vanity. Everyone starts by knowing nothing about anything, but God gives him—and even her—brains to find out with. Failure to use them is not a virtue to be praised;

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits.

Your work is to survive. Neither his kind, nor his kind of thinking will survive long. They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled—they have nowhere more to go. But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature. Who, then, were the recent lords of creation, that they should expect to remain unchanged?

I was hiding from them even while I moved among them.

a sort of botanical glory-hole

The simple rely on a bolstering mass of maxim and precept, so do the timid, so do the mentally lazy – and so do all of us, more than we imagine.

I don‟t know what to say,” she whispered. “Normally, I‟d advise „thank you,‟ but as I am the one thanking you, a mere „You are a prince among men‟ would suffice.

What is there not to like about cupids?" "You don't find them rather dangerous?" "Chubby little babies?" "Carrying deadly weapons.

And your oil engines are just a deplorable perversion – dirty, noisy, poisonous, and the cars you drive with them are barbarous, dangerous...” Chocky in "Chocky

But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet?

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain." She was quite right. It was that simplicity that seemed somehow to be the nucleus of the shock. From very familiarity one forgets all the forces which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not.

We could only control India through force of arms, but force was useless against a people who didn’t fight back; because you couldn’t kill people like that without killing a part of yourself too.

Half the political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don’t get the value of their stuff across—not so much because they’re over their audience’s heads, as because half the chaps are listening to the voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they do hear because it’s all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary, normal talk.

The Old People brought down Tribulation, and were broken into fragments by it. Your father and his kind are a part of those fragments. They have become history without being aware of it. They are determined still that there is a final form to defend: soon they will attain the stability they strive for, in the only form it is granted—a place among the fossils.

It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”—that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms. And now it was happening here.

The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution: and we are part of it. The static, the enemy of change, is the enemy of life, and therefore our implacable enemy.

It’s humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it’s a still poorer pass to have no one to depend on.

The alternative is the sword over your heads,' he said. 'I know,' I agreed unhappily. 'But that isn't the way. A sword inside us would be worse.

One night Death left his card. I was not familiar with the name he chose: but the black edge was deep. I flung it back. A thousand awakenings of violence.

The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact.

You are judging by social rules and finding crime. I am considering an elemental struggle, and finding no crime - just grim, primeval danger

You're twisting my words." "I think you are doing a fine job of twisting them yourself.

Pretty nearly any stroke of fate can be made to look like a funny coincidence if you try hard enough and wait long enough.

Don't you sometimes wish that you had been born into the Age of Reason, instead of into the Age of the Ostensible Reason?

Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist. - about Wyndham Lewis

I would do terrible things for the ones I love, Miss Wyndham.

There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by "Mother Nature". Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul - unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct.

As a race, we have allowed ourselves to become accustomed to the idea that the proper way to die is in bed, at a ripe age. It is a delusion. The normal end for all creatures comes suddenly.

But when people are used to believing a thing is such-and-such a way, and the preachers want them to believe that that's the way it is; it's trouble you get, not thanks, for upsetting their ideas.

You've come all the way from London just for a joke, then?" I asked. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised." "No, no, my reason is of much greater importance. The entire city is in chaos. Buildings collapsing, streets flooding, the population plague-stricken, the Thames ablaze. But it was when an orphan boy I rescued from the rubble asked me, with his dying breath, 'Why did this all have to happen, sir? Why did Miss Wyndham leave?' that I solemnly promised to bring you back and restore peace.

It seemed to me an odd view to take - rather as if one should protest that one didn't LIKE the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most.

Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool’s vote is equal to a sensible man’s? If all the energy that is put into diddling mugs for their votes could be turned on to useful work, what a nation we could be!

The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened.

Once an idea has been planted no one can tell when and where it will stop growing.

I’m not exactly a patient man these days, my full measure of restraint having been expended sitting in a trench for several years acting as target practice for German artillery.

 “Your Tim is so unmistakably a healthy extravert type. Mens stulta in corpore sano, and all that.” “Exactly,” she agreed.

When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city - which was strange, because it began before I even knew what a city was.

every day it was tomorrow that I’d be able to do it, and each day it became more difficult.

When people live their lives by their beliefs objective reality is almost irrelevant. ‘That’s

In Oppley they're smart, and in Stouch they're smarmy, but Midwich folk are just plain barmy

He was discovering that may be there was more him than his name. And may be, when all was said and done, he'd still be whole.

Five years with the dowager - Good God, she ought to be given a title in her own right as a penance for such as that. No one had done more for England.

seem to

Babies, in a world that already has far too many, remain desirable.

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.

All my life I have been surrounded by things I'd rather not know too much about, so I have come to feel that truth made naked without purpose is really a wanton.

We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words.

Odd, don’t you think? We could drown a litter of kittens that is no sort of threat to us – but these creatures we shall carefully rear.

Suspicion insulated one curiously little against the shock of knowledge.

I told you all this so that you understand that if someone says that something is so, that does not prove that it is so.

Reality is relative. Devils, evil spirits, witches and so on became real enough to the people who believed in them. Just as God is to people who believe in Him. When people live their lives by their beliefs objective reality is almost irrelevant.

Moreover, I was beginning to experience something new - the fear of being alone. I had not been alone since I walked from the hospital along Piccadilly, and then there had been bewildering novelty in all I saw. Now,for the first time I began to feel the horror that real loneliness holds for a species that is by nature gregarious. I felt naked, exposed to all the fears that prowled...

She did find that the books displayed prominently in every chamber had been dusted, but the spines were pristine and uncreased. They had the sad, untouched air of literature paraded for display purposes but never actually used. It was profoundly depressing. Wyndham’s

Philip Wyndham! That is the most inappropriate thing I have ever heard, and if your mother were here she would give you the scolding of your life! In fact, I have half a mind to go tell her what an atrocious, incorrigible, scandalous tease she has raised.” He didn’t look the least bit chagrined. He just smiled and said, “If my mother were here I wouldn’t have said it. That was for your ears only.” And then he winked. I stared at him in disbelief. There was no stopping him. He had no limits to how far he would go with his outrageous flirting.

And so the one in our garden continued its growth peacefully, as did thousands like it in neglected spots all over the world. It was some little time later that the first one picked up its roots and walked.

We are against the glorification of “the People,” as we are against snobbery. It is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. Art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hat can well hold the Sixtine. A cheap cap could hide the image of Kephren.

To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the herd no longer exists, there is, for the herd creature, no longer entity, a part of no whole; a freak without a place. If he cannot hold on to his reason, then he is lost indeed; most utterly, most fearfully lost, so that he becomes no more than the twitch in the limb of a corpse.

I'm not romancing. I'm talking about the inevitable time when, unless we do something to stop it, men will be hunting men through the ruins, for food. We're letting it drift towards that, with an evil irresponsibility, because with our ordinary short lives we shan't be here to see it. Does our generation care about the misery it is bequeathing? Not it. "That's their worry," we say. "Damn our children's children; we're all right.

They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the type fixed because they've got the arrogance to think themselves perfect. As they reckon it, they. and only they, are in the true image; very well, then it follows that if the image is true, they themselves must be God: and, being God, they reckon themselves entitled to decree, "thus far, and no farther." That is their great sin: they try to strangle the life out of Life.

His hand was on her arm, and he could feel her skin, feel the soft warmth of it, and then when he looked down, her face was tilted toward his, and her eyes, deep and blue but so completely unmysterious, were gazing up at him, and in truth there was no way—simply no way—he could do anything in that moment but kiss her. Anything else would have been a tragedy.

In my experience,' he told me, 'if you run away from a thing just because you don't like it, you don't like what you find either. Now, running to a thing, that's a different matter, but what would you want to run to?

Lovely house,” Jack said, as he was led—hands still bound—through the grand entrance of Belgrave. He turned to the old lady. “Did you decorate? It has that woman‟s touch.” Miss Eversleigh was trailing behind, but he could hear her choke back a bubble of laughter. “Oh, let it out, Miss Eversleigh,” he called over his shoulder. “Much better for your constitution.

But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting—that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open—shut up the mind's eye—all will be music!

People ought to be allowed to drop to pieces in any way they choose. I even disapprove of propping them up. Let nations, like men, die in peace. I rather feel as if I had been delivering pep talks to men dying of cancer.

In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction. They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled — they have nowhere more to go. But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature

You can't kill an idea the way they try to. You can keep it down awhile, but sooner or later it'll come out. Now what you've got to understand is that the wheel's not evil. Never mind what the scared men all tell you. no discovery is good or evil until men make it that way." -The Wheel, John Wtndham

Very well,” he said with a small sigh. “Ladies today are so very capable. It breaks my hea rt, really.” He leaned in, almost as if sharing a secret. “No one likes to feel superfluous.” Grace just stared at him. “Rendered mute by my grace and charm,” he said, stepping back to allow them to exit. “It happens all the time. Really, I shouldn‟t be allowed near the ladies. I have such a vexing effect on you.

My great-aunt, and other people's great-aunts, won all the rights that women need ages ago. All that's been lacking since then is the social courage to use them. My great-aunt and the rest thought that by technically defeating male privilege they'd scored a great victory. What they didn't realize is that the greatest enemies of women aren't men at all, they are women: silly women, lazy women, and smug women.

The definition of Man recited itself in my head... And God created man in His own image. And God decreed that man should have one body, one head, two arms and two legs: that each arm should be joined in two places and end in one hand: that each hand should have four fingers and one thumb: that each finger should bear a flat finger-nail...Then God created woman, also, in the same image, but with these differences, according to her nature: her voice would be of higher pitch than man's: she should grow no beard: she should have two breasts... And any creature that shall seem to be human, but is not formed thus is not human. It is neither man, nor woman. It is a blasphemy against the true image of God, and hateful in the sight of God.

I can remember meeting of a Sunday night Charles Whibley, Kenneth Grahame, author of 'The Golden Age,' Barry Pain, now a well known novelist, R. A. M. Stevenson, art critic and a famous talker, George Wyndham, later on a cabinet minister and Irish chief secretary, and Oscar Wilde, who was some eight years or ten older than the rest.

The War went on far too long... It was too vast for its meaning, like a giant with the brain of a midge. Its epic proportions were grotesquely out of scale, seeing what it was fought to settle. It was far too indecisive. It settled nothing, as it meant nothing. Indeed, it was impossible to escape the feeling that it was not meant to settle anything - that could have any meaning, or be of any advantage, to the general run of men.

What do a few thousands, or a few millions of people matter? Women will just go on making the loss good. But Governments are important–one mustn’t risk them.

But the world is round so there must be another way to get there.

novelty is a wonderfully short-lived thing.

A tančili sme. Při ozvěne minulosti, na prahu neznámé budoucnosti.

I'm not bigoted enough to twist facts to suit what I've been taught.

In a period of such obsessing political controversy as the present, I believe that I am that strange animal, the individual without any politics at all.

appreciating a private room. In a public ward the messy proceeding would have taken place a whole unnecessary hour

All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash.

Failure. That is a word so little to our taste that many think it a virtue to claim that they never admit it. But blind stupidity is not one of the virtues; it is a weakness...

La vida, en todas sus manifestaciones, es conflicto

There is nothing contemptible about an intoxicated man (if it is nothing more than a bookful of words or a roomful of notes that he has got drunk on).

The only sounds in the cave were the hopeless, abandoned sobbing, and plop-plop-plop of the drips. Petra looked at us, then at the figure on the bed, then at us again, expectantly. When neither of us moved she appeared to decide that the initiative lay with her. She crossed to the bedside and knelt down concernedly beside it. Tentatively she put a hand on the dark hair. 'Don't,' she said. 'Please don't.' There was a startled catch in the sobbing. A pause, then a brown arm reached out round Petra's shoulders. The sound became a little less desolate ... it no longer tore at one's heart: but it left it bruised and aching..

Triffids were at large...I began to loathe them now from more than their carrion-eating habits - they, more than anything else, seemed able to profit and flourish on our disaster...

What we do with the product of genius is first of all ram it down to the lowest common denominator and then multiply it by the vulgarest possible fraction. -from "Pawley's Peepholes

In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint, the status of the triffid was thus made quite clear. But in the tropics, particularly in the dense forest areas, they quickly became a scourge.

sham idealists: the quite large number of people who profess ideals as a form of premium for other-life insurance, and are content to lay up slavery and destitution for their descendants so long as they are enabled to produce personal copybooks of elevated views at the gate of heaven.

When he began to talk about Wyndham, it was almost with relief, as if his purpose in life was to tell that story over and over. To tell it until its last shard had been pulled from him. As he listened to himself, he realized that the story sounded practiced as it changed from event and recollection into language, as if each retelling were an attempt to scrub away the awfulness.

Why, Miss Wyndham,” Mr. Kent replied, looking as chaste and good as a debutante at her presentation to the Queen. “I think we can all agree it’s fair to punish these guilty people feigning innocence every day of their lives, all while helping a wrongfully accused innocent. I would certainly never ask you, but I suspect you agree.” “You cannot simply blackmail people into liking me!

I’m terribly sorry, my acquaintance here hardly knows how to talk to people. Please, let’s start again and allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas Kent, and accompanying me is the lovely Miss Wyndham, the frowning Mr. Braddock, the eternally calm Miss Chen, and the … Well, that’s Mr. Redburn. How are you?” “Irritated,” she replied and another crack of bright light twisted across the sky.

Abominable business this MacAuley affair,’ said Peters to no one in particular. ‘Absolutely dreadful,’ tutted Mrs Tebbit. ‘It makes you wonder if any of us are safe in our beds.’ I could have pointed out that MacAuley hadn’t been murdered in his bed, but five miles away in an alley behind a whore house.

Can you imagine us tolerating any form of rival intelligence on earth, no matter how it got here? Why, we can’t even tolerate anything but the narrowest differences of views within our own race. No,’ he shook his head, ‘no, I’m afraid Bocker’s idea of fraternization never had the chance of a flea in a furnace.

Miss Wyndham, I know you’re not pleased with the shocking things you’ve discovered lately, and I know you’ll think even worse of me when I tell you of the things I did before we met. But everything I—” “Sir, you are a liar and a cheat!” a customer bellowed at the shiner behind us. Mr. Kent glanced over his shoulder and attempted to ignore the yells. “Everything I do is to—” “These shoes are still soiled! The mud is right there! Return my money, sir!” the customer yelled again. Mr. Kent bristled and spun around to the shoe shiner. “Sir, are you wrong in this matter?” “N-no,” the shoe shiner stammered. “I’m trying to be fair.” Mr. Kent turned to the customer. “Are you wrong?” “Yes, of course I am,” he said, his face flushing. “Then avoid stepping in the mud, shut up, and be on your way! I am trying to convince a girl to love me!

There were some cigarettes still in the case. I lit one, and started to get into the state of mind where, though everything was still undeniably queer, I could no longer understand why I had been quite so near panic. It

I never knew the joy, energy and ambitions which are in youth - yet I know the loss and I feel that I have been robbed of my heritage. You can dream of the future and of your children's future: we can dream of nothing but the past.

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that . . . In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. —Albert Camus

The laws evolved by one particular species, for the convenience of that species, are, by their nature, concerned only with the capacities of that species - against a species with different capacities they simply become inapplicable.

Will you leave my companion alone!” the dowager barked. He sighed and shook his head toward Miss Eversleigh. “She‟s so domineering, don‟t you think?” Miss Eversleigh blushed. Truly, it was the prettiest pink he‟d ever seen. “Pity about these bindings,” he continued. “We do seem to be caught in a romantic moment, your employer‟s acidic presence aside, and it would be far easier to drop one exquisite kiss on the back of your hand were I able to lift it with one of mine.

There they sit, with everyone thinking no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet half the time they’re pattering and clattering away at one another. Why? What is it they patter about? That’s what I want to know.’ I

The leader does the planning, but he’s wise enough not to say so. As the changes become necessary, he slips them in as a concession – temporary, of course – to circumstances, but if he’s good, he’s slipping in the right bits for the ultimate shape.

He was a kind man, and if there was one thing the war had taught me, it was that when you meet such a person, the sensible thing to do is to take advantage of them as much as possible, for you never know when you’ll come across such a gift-horse again.

Marvelously clear-fretted in the unsmoked air, the Abbey rose, silver-grey. It stood detached by the serenity of age from the ephemeral growths around it. It was solid on a foundation of centuries, destined, perhaps, for centuries yet to preserve within it the monuments to those whose work was now all destroyed. I did not loiter there. In years to come I expect some will go o look at the old Abbey with romantic melancholy. But romance of that kind is an alloy of tragedy with retrospect. I was too close.

She should have been relieved that she did not do something she was sure to regret. But she wasn't. She wanted her regrets. She wanted them desperately. She wanted to do something she knew she should not, and she wanted to lie in bed at night letting the memory keep her warm.

What do you think it is that makes a man" I started on the Definition. He cut me of after five words. "It is not!" he said. "A wax figure could have all that, and he'd still be a wax figure, wouldn't he?" ... "Well, then, what makes a man a man is something inside him." "A soul?" I suggested. "No... souls are just counters for churches to collect, all the same value, like nails. No, what makes man man is mind; it's not a thing, it's a quality, and minds aren't all the same value; they're better or worse, and the better they are, the more they mean.

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive – yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk – the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable.

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive—yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk—the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable. Under a wide blue sky where a few clouds sailed like celestial icebergs the cities became a less oppressive memory, and the sense of living freshened us again like a clean wind. It does not, perhaps, excuse, but it does at least explain why from time to time I was surprised to find myself singing as I drove.

We have both been given the same wish to survive, We are all, you see, toys of the life-force. It made you numerically stronger, but mentally undeveloped. It made us mentally strong but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see what will happen. A cruel sport perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself. There is some improvement: humour and compassion are the most important of human inventions; but they are not very firmly established yet, though promising well. But the life-force is a lot stronger than they are; and it won't be denied its blood-sports.

It's still horrible. The whole thing." "Dreadful," Grace agreed. Amelia turned and looked at her directly. "Sodding bad." Grace gasped, "Amelia!" Amelia's face wrinkled in thought. "Did I use that correctly?" "I wouldn't know." "Oh, come now, don't tell me you haven't thought something just as unladylike." "I wouldn't say it." The look Amelia gave her was clear as a dare. "But you thought it." Grace felt her lips twitch. "It's a dammed shame." "A bloody inconvenience, if you ask me.

I hated this new breed of pacifist Indian revolutionary. So often they acted like we were all just good friends who happened to disagree about something, and that once the issue was resolved – obviously in their favour – we’d go back to taking tea and being the best of chums. It made punching them in the face morally difficult.

To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the herd no longer exists, there is, for the herd creature, no longer entity. He is a part of no whole, a freak without a place. If he cannot hold onto his reason, then he is lost indeed: most utterly and most fearfully lost, so that he becomes no more than the twitch in the limb of a corpse. It

Among the other papers I bought at London Airport was the current number of The Beholder. Thought it is, I am aware, not without its merits and even well thought of in some circles, it leaves me with an abiding sense that it is more given to expressing its first prejudices than its second thoughts. Perhaps if it were to go to press a day later....

There’s a whole lot of people don’t seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he’ll take you seriously. If you talk tough and quote Shelley they think you’re cute, like a performing monkey or something, but they don’t pay any attention to what you say. You have to talk the kind of lingo they’re accustomed to taking seriously. And it works the other way too. Half the political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don’t get the value of their stuff across—not so much because they’re over their audience’s heads, as because half the chaps are listening to the voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they do hear because it’s all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary, normal talk.

We are explorers. We are at present, as far as we know, the only explorers of the universe. For a long time we thought that ours was the only planet that could support life. Then we found others that could – a few. For still longer we thought we were unique – the only intelligent form of life – a single, freakish pinpoint of reason in a vast, adventitious cosmos – utterly lonely in the horrid wastes of space.… Again we discovered we were mistaken… But intelligent life is rare… very rare indeed… the rarest thing in creation… But the most precious… For intelligent life is the only thing that gives meaning to the universe. It is a holy thing, to be fostered and treasured. Without it nothing begins, nothing ends, there can be nothing through all eternity but the mindless babblings of chaos… Therefore, the nurture of all intelligent forms is a sacred duty. Even the merest spark of reason must be fanned in the hope of a flame. Frustrated intelligence must have its bonds broken. Narrow-channelled intelligence must be given the power to widen out. High intelligence must be learned from. That is why I have stayed here.

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?' 'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could. ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this...' She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own. I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached.

The first phase of modernism, which so far as the English language goes we associate with Pound and Yeats, Wyndham Lewis and Eliot and Joyce, was clerkly enough, sceptical in many ways; and yet we can without difficulty convict most of these authors of dangerous lapses into mythical thinking. All were men of critical temper, haters of the decadence of the times and the myths of mauvaise foi. All, in different ways, venerated tradition and had programmes which were at once modern and anti-schismatic. This critical temper was admittedly made to seem consistent with a strong feeling for renovation; the mood was eschatological, but scepticism and a refined traditionalism held in check what threatened to be a bad case of literary primitivism. It was elsewhere that the myths ran riot.

Your talents are for pointing guns and removing necklaces off ladies' necks?' 'I charm the necklaces off their necks ... Kindly make the distinction.' 'Oh, please.' 'I charmed you.' She was all indignation. 'You did not.' 'Recall the night in question, Miss Eversleigh. The moonlight, the soft wind.' 'There was no wind.' 'You're spoiling my memory,' he growled. 'There was no wind,' she stated. 'You are romanticizing the encounter.' 'Can you blame me? he returned, smiling at her wickedly. 'I never know who is going to step through the carriage door. Most of the time I get a wheezy old badger.

Something entirely unexpected happened to Bert. Yesterday he had seen her as a child grown up, today it was different. There was a pain in his chest and a hammering, the skin on his temples felt oddly tight, his hand trembled so that he almost dropped the bar he was holding. He leaned back against the wheel, staring at her but unable to speak. A long time seemed to pass before he could say anything, and the words sounded clumsy in his own ears. What

Напоследък сте съумели да овладеете и натрупаната от вашето слънце енергия и наричате това прогрес. Това не е прогрес. Прогресът е приближаване към някаква цел. Каква е вашата цел? Не знаете и тъй като не я знаете, все едно че се движите в кръг — което всъщност и правите, защото вие пилеете енергийните си източници. А те са вашият капитал. Когато ги изчерпите, ще се върнете обратно на нивото, на което сте били, преди да ги откриете. Това не е прогрес, това е разточителство.

Wszedł ojciec. - Złapali ich. Całą trójkę – powiedział do inspektora i spojrzał na mnie z odrazą. Inspektor natychmiast wstał i wyszli razem. Wpatrywałem się w zamknięte drzwi. Ból samonagany przenikną mnie tak, że cały się zatrząsałem. Słyszałem własne jęki i łzy spływały mi po policzkach. Usiłowałem je powstrzymać, ale nie mogłem. Zapomniałem o bolących plecach. Udręka wieści, którą przyniósł ojciec, była o wiele bardziej bolesna. Czułem taki ucisk w piersiach, że się dusiłem.

All this drinking and dancing and flirting,” Mr. Kent said with a sigh, balancing a glass on the railing for me. “Dreadful business, isn’t it?” “Yes, I don’t understand it,” I mumbled, accepting the champagne as if it could magically transport me away. No, still here. What on earth was he getting at? Was he toying with me? “That’s just it. Perspective is a curious thing. One day, you see everything from one angle and you think you know what’s important,” he continued, looking out at the dancers. Then he turned to me, smiling wryly. “Then another day, from another angle, you see what’s really important, and everything else just . . . melts away.” “I see,” I said without meeting his eyes, hoping he’d be dissuaded. He wasn’t. His hand slid across the railing and caught mine. “I have never seen you here before. Are you one of Mrs. Shine’s girls?” he asked. Seen you here before? Downstairs, the tempo of the violins and cellos quickened. As my blood boiled, I could barely hear my own thoughts, and the response left my lips compulsively. “No.” “Excellent, then might I ask, who is your—” “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” I interrupted, hurrying away past the bar and the horrible paintings toward the stairs. “Please, wait!” he called from behind, chasing after me. “What is your name?” “Evelyn Wyndham,” I said, giving him a false name. Dammit. Champagne and Mr. Kent did not mix well. “M-miss Wyndham!” he exclaimed. For a moment, it was rather strange to see the confident man look so confused, but he quickly regained himself with a smile. “I . . . I was just having a bit of fun. I knew it was you.” “Oh, was that before or after you propositioned me?” “That is a question with no right answer, but keep in mind what I was saying about perspective earlier—

I lay awake for an hour or more. Night magnified the quiet of the city, making the sounds which broke it the more desolate. From time to time voices rose from the street, sharp and brittle with hysteria. Once there was a freezing scream which seemed to revel horribly in its release from sanity. Somewhere nor tar away there was a sobbing that went on endlessly, hopelessly. Twice I heard the sharp reports of single pistol shots I gave heartfelt thanks to whatever it was that had brought Josella and me together for companionship. Complete loneliness was the worst stare I could imagine just then. Alone, one would be nothing. Company meant purpose, and purpose helped to keep the morbid fears at bay.

The Sunday Tidings, which had for some years been pursing a policy of intellectual sensationalism, had never found it easy to maintain its supply of material. The stuff of mere emotional sensationalism, as used by its cheaper and less dignified contemporaries, lay thickly all around, easily malleable into shapes attractive to the constant human passions. Intellectual sensationalism, however, was a much more tricky business. In addition to avoiding the suggestion of sensationalism for sensationalism's sake, it required knowledge, research, careful timing, and, if possible, some literary ability. Inevitably, therefore, its policy was subject to lamentable gaps during which it could find nothing topical on its chosen level to disclose.

An uncomfortable thing happened now. He realised suddenly all the possibilities of this chance acquaintanceship, plainly and cinematographically. He was seized with panic. He must make a good impression. From that moment he ran the risk of doing the reverse. For he was unaccustomed to act with calculation. There he was like some individual who had gone nonchalantly into the presence of a prince; who—just in the middle of the audience—when he would have been getting over his first embarrassment —is overcome with a tardy confusion, the imagination in some way giving a jump. It is the imagination, repressed and as it were slighted, revenging itself. Casting about desperately for means of handling the situation, he remembered she had spoken of getting a dog to guide her. What had she meant? Anyway, he grasped at the dog. He could regain possession of himself in romantic stimulus of this figure. He would be her dog! Lie at her feet! He would fill with a merely animal warmth and vivacity the void that must exist in her spirit. His imagination, flattered, came in as ally. This, too, exempted him from the necessity of being victorious. All he asked was to be her dog! Only wished to impress her as a dog! Even if she did not feel much sympathy for him now, no matter. He would humbly follow her up, put himself at her disposition, not be exigent. It was a role difficult to refuse him. Sense of security the humility of this resolution brought about, caused him to regain a self-possession. Only it imposed the condition, naturally, of remaining a dog.