The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells Quotes

“Then I look about me at my fellow-men; and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion; that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk. Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances,”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“great proportion of the lower middle class should properly be assigned to the unemployed and the unemployable. They are only not that, because the possession of some small hoard of money, savings during a period of wage earning, an insurance policy or suchlike capital, prevents a direct appeal to the rates. But they are doing little or nothing for the community in return for what they consume;”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“A weakly wilful being struggling to get obdurate things round impossible corners”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“the etiolated pallor followed naturally enough.”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“I feel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale.”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“and when”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young.”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“a sound rather more like a very, very old sheep a quarter of a mile away being blown to pieces by a small charge of gunpowder than anything else in the world”
― H.G. Wells, The Collected Works of H.G. Wells

“All these — the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way — they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them — no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other — Lord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to work — I’ve seen hundreds of ‘em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them,”
― H.G. Wells, The Complete Novels of H.G. Wells

“much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity — indeed there is no necessity — for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children’s needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete.”
― H.G. Wells, The Collected Works of H.G. Wells