H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” Quotes (16 Quotes)

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.

No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?

The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.

The too perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, a general dwindling in size strength and intelligence.

They were put into my pockets by Weena, when I traveled into Time.

Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily.

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then comes languor and decay.

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough---as most wrong theories are!

We all have our time machines.Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward,are dreams!

We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.

We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence.

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of men.

And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Upperworld people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the ?eld. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same.

For after the Battle comes quiet.

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure.

It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.