Earth Abides Quotes

“Men go and come, but earth abides.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“The trouble you're expecting never happens; it's always something that sneaks up the other way.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“The people who live in any generation do much, he realized, either to create or to solve the problems for the people who come in the generations later.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Then, though his sight was now very dim, he looked again at the young men. "They will commit me to the earth," he thought. "Yet I also commit them to the earth. There is nothing else by which men live. Men go and come, but earth abides.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“As for man, there is little reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Man has been growing more stupid for several thousand years; I myself shall waste no tears at his demise.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“In that world, those with seeing eyes could only blunder about, but the blind man would be at home, and now instead of being the one who was guided by others, he might be one the one to whom the others clung for guidance.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“It is a strange thing," he thought, "to be an old god. They worship you, and yet they mistreat you. If you do not want to do what they wish, they make you. It is not fair.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“For he realized that a man should make peace with himself, even though all conditions changed, and that a man should face the question of whether in his life he had satisfied the ideas which he had built up within himself as to what he should be, and that all this was not a matter of priests and religion but of a man himself.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“After the sudden release of the laughter, he was trembling. All his body seemed growing weak. He felt, almost physically, more barriers breaking--those necessary barriers of defense, built up through the months of loneliness and desperation. He must touch another human being, and he put forward his hand in the old conventional gesture of the handshake. She took it, and doubtless as she noticed his trembling, she drew him toward a chair and almost pushed him into it. As he sat down, she patted his shoulder lightly.
She spoke again, once more neither questioning nor commanding: "I'll get you something to eat."
He did not protest, though he had just eaten heartily. But he knew that behind her quiet affirmation lay something more than any call of the body for food. There was need now for the symbolic eating together, that first common bond of human beings--the sitting at the same table, the sharing of bread and salt.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“He started to engage the gears, and then suddenly paused with a feeling of uneasiness. He did not regret leaving his own car, but still something worried him. In a moment he remembered. He went back to his old car, and took out the hammer. He carries it over to the station wagon and laid it at his feet. Then he drove out of the garage.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“a notable bacteriologist indicated that the emergence of some new disease had always been a possibility which had worried the more far-thinking epidemiologists.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“As once, when the armies of the empire were shattered and the strong barbarians poured in upon the soft provincials, so now the fierce weeds pressed in to destroy the pampered nursling's of man.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“in the days of civilization there were many men. They did not think much about the world outside of them because man seemed to be greatly stronger than all that outside world. So they thought mostly about how they could get the better of other people, and so they were likely not to trust each other altogether, not even brother and brother. But now, he thought, when men are very few, each of these young men wanders freely with his bow in hand and his dog at heel, but needs his comrade close at call.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“This we do, not hastily; this we do, not in passion; this we do, without hatred.
This is not the battle, when a man strikes fiercely and fear drives him on. This is not the hot quarrel when two strive for place or the love of a woman.
Knot the rope; whet the ax; pour the poison; pile the faggots.
This is the one who killed his fellow unprovoked; this is the one who stole the child away; this is the one who spat upon the image of our God; this is the one who leagued himself with the Devil to be a witch; this is the one who corrupted our youth; this is the one who told the enemy of our secret places.
We are afraid, but we do not talk of fear. We have many deep thoughts and doubts, but we do not speak them. We say, “Justice”; we say, “The Law”; we say, “We, the people”; we say, “The State.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Between the plan and the fulfillment stands always the frail barrier of a human life.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Child of the Blessing, who sees not what is, but sees what is not, and seeing thus what is not, imagines also what may be.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“It has never happened!” cannot be construed to mean, “It can never happen!”—as well say, “Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable,” or “Because I’ve never died, I am immortal.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Genius is the capacity for seeing what is not there.” Of course, like every other definition of genius, that one could be shot to pieces also, because it obviously included the madman, as well as the genius. Yet there might be something in it, too; the great thinkers of the world must necessarily have made their reputations by sensing what was not there and looking for it and discovering it, but the first requisite for making the discovery, unless it depended upon mere luck, was the realization that something unseen was there to be discovered, something lacking in the picture.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“It had been a great thing, in those Old Times, to be an American. You had been deeply conscious of being one of a great nation. It was no mere matter of pride, but also there went with it a profound sense of confidence and security in life, and a comradeship of millions.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“There had been many definitions of Man; he would make another: “The noise-producing animal.” Now there was only the nearly imperceptible murmur of his own engine. He had no need to blow the horn. There were no back-firing trucks, no snorting trains, no pounding planes overhead. In the little towns no whistles blew or bells rang or radios blared or people talked. Even if it was the peace of death, still that was a kind of peace.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“A certain amount of looting, particularly of liquor stores was reported.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“It’s better,” he thought in words, remembering some bit of reading, “to have no opinion of God at all than to have one that is unworthy of Him.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“History was an artist, maintaining the idea but changing the details, like a composer keeping the same theme but dulling it to a minor or lifting by an octave, now crooning it with violins, now blaring it on trumpets.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“In this also we are men, that we think of the dead. Once it was not so, and when one of us died, he lay where he lay by the cave-mouth and we ran in and out there, not standing quite upright as we ran. Now we stand upright, and now also we think of the dead.

So, when the comrade lies there, we do not let him lie where he died. And we do not take him by the legs carelessly, and drag him into the forest for the foxes and woodrats to gnaw on. We do not cast him into the river carelessly for the stream to float him away.

No, but rather we lay him where the ground is hollowed out a little and there cover him with leaves and branches. So he shall return to the earth, whence all things came.

Or else we lay him to rest among the tree-branches, and give him to the air. Then, if the black birds come streaming from far to pluck at him, that too is right, for they are the creatures of the air.

Or else we give him to the bright and hot cleanliness of fire.

Then we go about our life as before, and soon we forget, like the beasts. But this at least we have done, and when we shall no longer do it, then we shall no longer be men.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Destroy the culture-pattern in which people lived, and often the shock was too great for the individuals. Take away family and job, friends and church, all customary amusements and routines, hope too—and life became walking death.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“Molto più in alto il firmamento si accese delle sue miriadi di luci, e stelle e pianeti si affacciarono sulla Terra degli uomini. Non possedevano occhi per vedere né bocche per pronunciare sentenze. Eppure fin dai tempi più remoti gli uomini avevano immaginato di sentirsi osservati, perfino giudicati, da quei corpi celesti. Se fosse vero, qualcuno avrebbe potuto chiedersi cosa mai stessero guardando i loro occhi silenziosi quella notte. Forse in ciò che avevano sotto di sé non vedevano alcun vero cambiamento. Benché non si levassero più nubi di fumo dalle ciminiere e gli agglomerati di luci fossero spenti, nell'atmosfera si spandeva ancora il fumo dei vulcani, e in molti luoghi le loro emozioni illuminavano la notte. Visto dalla luna, il pianeta madre non mostrava altro che il suo eterno spettacolo...né più oscuro né più brillante di prima.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

“But whether the new would follow the course which the old had followed, that he did not know, and now at last he was almost certain that he did not even desire that the cycle should be repeated. He suddenly thought of all that had gone to build civilization--of slavery and conquest and war and oppression.”
― George R. Stewart, Earth Abides