Way Station Quotes

“Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river – but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself – a thing that went on caring.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“And yet he had learned to submerge that sense of horror, to disregard the outward appearance of it, to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as people.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“Well,” said Winslowe, moving over to plant himself behind the wheel, “it don’t matter much what any of us are, just so we get along with one another. If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours—a lesson in how to get along—the world would be a whole lot better.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques - that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than any race, alone, could hope of accomplishing.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“There was almost a fairy quality to this place, he thought. The far look and the clear air and the feeling of detachment that touched almost on greatness of the spirit. As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it. He”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“That was how it started, Enoch thought, almost a hundred years ago. The campfire fantasy had turned into fact and the Earth now was on galactic charts, a way station for many different peoples traveling star to star. Strangers once, but now there were no strangers. There were no such things as strangers. In whatever form, with whatever purpose, all of them were people.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“She was a creature of the woods and hills, of springtime flower and autumn flight of birds. She knew these things and lived with them and was, in some strange way, a specific part of them. She was one who dwelt apart in an old and lost apartment of the natural world. She occupied a place that Man long since had abandoned, if, in fact, he’d ever held it.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“Delectable,” Ulysses said. “Of all the drinks that I have drank on all the planets I have visited, the coffee is the best.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences. With”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“With creation went responsibility and he was not equipped to assume more than the moral responsibility for the wrong that he had done, and moral responsibility, unless it might be coupled with the ability to bring about some mitigation, was an entirely useless thing.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“Until the last man threw away his weapon (any sort of weapon), the tribe of Man could not be at peace.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle. Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways. But if they had the chance, Enoch told himself, if they ever got a break, if they only could be told what was out in space, then they’d get a grip upon themselves and they would measure up and then, in the course of time, would be admitted into the great cofraternity of the people of the stars.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“They told me they were headed for a planet the name of which I had not heard before, and they talked among themselves, gaily and happily, but in such a way that I did not seem to be left out. From their talk I gained the fact that some form of art was being presented at the festival on this planet. The art form was not alone of music or painting, but was composed of sound and color and emotion and form and other qualities for which there seem to be no words in the language of the Earth, and which I do not entirely recognize, only gaining the very faintest inkling of what they were talking of in this particular regard. I gained the impression of a three-dimensional symphony, although this is not entirely the right expression, which had been composed, not by a single being, but by a team of beings. They talked of the art form enthusiastically and I seemed to understand that it would last for not only several hours, but for days, and that it was an experience rather than a listening or seeing and that the spectators or audience did not merely sit and listen, but could, if they wished, and must, to get the most out of it, be participants.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“Was war an instinctive thing, for which each ordinary man was as much responsible, as the policy makers and the so-called statesmen? It seemed impossible, and yet, deep in every man was the combative instinct, the aggressive urge, the strange sense of competition- all of which spelled conflict of one kind or another if carried to conclusion.”
― Clifford Simak, the Way Station

“He had given them everything that a human being had with the one exception of that most important thing of all -- the ability to exist within the human world.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“Енох вийшов надвір. День видався напрочуд прекрасний, один із незабутніх днів розбуялого літа. Мине кілька тижнів, думав він, і зʼявляться перші прикмети осені, повіє призабутим холодком. Де-не-де стебла золотарника почали вкриватися жовтими квітками, а вчора він помітив, що пупʼянки ранніх айстр, які подекуди збереглися під старим парканом, почали набирати кольору.
Він завернув за рік будинку й попрямував до ріки, спускаючись великими кроками довгим занедбаним полем, що заросло невисокою ліщиною, крізь яку зрідка пробивалися купи дрібних дерев.
Ось вона, Земля, думав собі він, планета, призначена людині. Але не тільки людині, бо на ній живуть лисиці, сови, ласки, змії, коники, риби, бо це планета живих істот, якими аж кишать повітря, земля та вода. Вона може бути домівкою не тільки для місцевих житців; вона могла би стати притулком і для інших істот, що називають своїм домом інші землі, інші планети, котрі знаходяться за багато світлових років звідси, але докорінно від Землі не відрізняються. Для Улісса й Осяйних, і для всіх інших, хто за потреби і бажання міг би жити на цій планеті, не відчуваючи дискомфорту і без усіляких там штучних пристосувань.
Перед нами неосяжні горизонти, розмірковував він, а ми бачимо тільки те, що у нас під носом. Навіть зараз, коли ракети, вивергаючи полумʼя, з натугою розриваючи одвічні пута земного тяжіння, стартують з мису Канаверал, ми не маємо величних мрій.
Біль був з ним, і цей біль повсякчас лише зростав, болюче прагнення поділитися з усім людством тим, про що він дізнався. Не стільки конкретними фактами, хоча серед них були такі, які людство могло би запозичити, отримавши неабияку користь для себе, але насамперед загальновідомими істинами, такими, наприклад, як те, що у Всесвіті скрізь є розумні істоти, що людство не самотнє, і якщо воно обере правильний шлях, то вже ніколи не буде самотнім.”
― Кліффорд Сімак, Way Station

“He was a victim of museum fatigue, Enoch told himself, overwhelmed by the many pieces of the unknown scattered all about him.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“All things are hard, it said. There is nothing easy.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“You know my name?” “Of course I do.” “Well, that is fine,” said Enoch. “And what about your own?” “I am seized with great embarrassment,” the alien told him. “For I have no name as such. Identification, surely, that fits the purpose of my race, but nothing that the tongue can form.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“He stood quietly in the dark and silence, and the voice of a century of living seemed to speak to him in a silent language. All things are hard, it said. There is nothing easy.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“The river rolled below him and the river did not care. Nothing mattered to the river. It would take the tusk of mastodon, the skull of sabertooth, the rib cage of a man, the dead and sunken tree, the thrown rock or rifle and would swallow each of them and cover them in mud or sand and roll gurgling over them, hiding them from sight. A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river—but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself—a thing that went on caring.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station

“A man, he told himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity. The galaxy was too big a place for any being to stand naked and alone.”
― Clifford D. Simak, Way Station