"Here on the table is a book of such a sort as does from time to time appear, making, one supposes, no particular pretence to fame, and yet exceedingly well done, because it is instinct with this national power, and everyone who has a shelf for the horrible in his library will welcome it and give it its place."

"She screamed before she realized what she did — a long, high shriek of terror that filled the room, yet made so little actual sound. For wet and shimmering presences stood grouped all round that bed. She saw their outline underneath the ceiling, the green, spread bulk of them, their vague extension over walls and furniture. They shifted to and fro, massed yet translucent, mild yet thick, moving and turning within themselves to a hushed noise of multitudinous soft rustling."

"(...) The whole setting of this Moravian school was so beautifully simple that it lent just the proper atmosphere for lives consecrated without flourish of trumpets to God. It all left upon me an impression of grandeur, of loftiness, and of real religion... and of a Deity not specially active on Sundays only."

"Algernon Blackwood (1869—1951) wrote magnificent tales of visionary horror (The Wendigo, The Willows), superbly modulated stories of black magic (Ancient Sorceries, Secret Worship), perfectly constructed ghost stories (The Empty House, Keeping His Promise, The Listener)."

"'I didn't find it in the least difficult,' said Grigg. 'Those meant to succeed at a thing never do find the thing difficult.' 'Meant? Meant by whom?' 'By the life of which they are a part, whether they know it or not.' 'It is very mystical,' said Grigg."

"I don’t spend all day reading the newspapers. It can get hold of you as poisonously as the television, if you once let it."

"She had rather looked down on such shops and on such clothes, but that had been ignorance and the wrong kind of sophistication."

"Upon the passage to truth, cross-currents are to be expected."

"The idea came to him, not for the first time, that most of the things which people buy in the belief that they are luxuries are really poor substitutes for luxury."

"She was almost glowing with resolution. She realized that to display moral qualities demands practice, just as much as intellectual and manual qualities."

"It was, in any case, quite useless, and, like most useless things, useless almost immediately."

"'Ingenious you certainly were - like monkeys. But you neglected your philosophers - to your own ruin. Each new discovery was a toy. You never considered its true worth. You just pushed it into your system - a system already suffering from hardening of the arteries. And you were a greedy people. You took each discovery as if it were a bright new garment, but when you put it on you wore it over your old, verminous rags. You had grave need of disinfectants.'"

"'In the end, defeat, and the cold, must come. First to the system, then the galaxy, then the universe, and the rest will be silence. Not to admit that is a foolish vanity.' She paused. 'Yet one grows flowers because they are lovely - not because one wishes them to live for ever.'"

"I read Harlan Ellison's stories and also John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov-all the SF classics, whatever I got my hands on."

"A mind oppressed by a sense of sin can play a lot of nasty tricks. Nowadays they talk of guilt complexes and inhibitions. Names change: when I was a boy the same thing was known as a bad conscience . . ."

"Truth is not altered by belief or disbelief."

"There are some forms of knowledge which it is unwise to spread; men are not yet ready to handle them."

"What is life anyway? - some kind of seed floating about the universe until it finds suitable conditions to develop? May be. Lord knows what there may be in all this Space. Perhaps we were once a few chance spores; perhaps there are a lot of different kinds of life floating about waiting for time to give them their chance . . ."

"Those are the methods of Earth; that is the honour of great companies, as you will know to your cost should you have dealings with them. They'll use you, and then break you. . . ."

""And it all comes of this gallivanting about the Universe. I never did think much of it. Stick to your own planet, is what I say; it's quite big enough. But will they? Not so's you'd notice it. They go flinging themselves into space, and then what happens?" He paused aggrievedly."

"We have been but little molested, for we have not the things which most men value."

"The creatures fling the most dangerous frequencies around, not only without effort but regardless of consequences."

"Many men on earth have the vanity to believe in another life."

"The English," [Vinski] remarked at length, "have a saying that possession is nine points of the law. It is just the kind of sentiment one would expect to find in a capitalist country."

"But it is the old story of new generations refusing to be bound by the promises of their forefathers."

"The fact that we don't know how to do it doesn't prove its impossibility."

"There's plenty o' chaps full of book learnin' an' unemployed with it."

"Doubtless the first arrow did not kill a lion."

"No one but a fool would say that a man who seethes inside like a volcano is calm. I only know that when I see a man so tormented and cheated, and with such a look in his eyes, he is dangerous."

"It takes civilised people quite a while to appreciate 'the big lie' technique."

"It is a funny thing that for most men the whitest conscience is no protection from some apprehension in the presence of the police."

"A man's the same as the rest of us or 'e's a freak. Stands to reason."

"To take an illustration—a bad one, I admit, but enough for our purpose—one may consider time as a river. You may turn boats adrift on it at many points, and they will all collect together at the same serious obstacle, whether they have travelled a hundred miles or two miles."

"It boils down to this. If a man, any man, claims to have had an experience which is outside all normal experience, it will be inferred, will it not, that he is in some way not quite a normal man? A small cloud, a mere wrack, of doubt and risk begins to gather above him. It is tenuous, too insubstantial for him to disperse, yet it casts a faint, persistent shadow. There is, I imagine, no such thing as a normal human being, but there is a widespread feeling that there ought to be. Any organisation has a conception of 'the type of man we want here' which is regarded as the normal for its purposes. So every man there attempts more or less to accord to it - organisational man, in fact - and anyone who diverges more than slightly from the type in either his public, or in his private life does so to the peril of his career."

"What is the use of life?"

"She showed all that maternal solicitude which so oddly hopes that its child will be outstanding while being absolutely normal, distinguished while being indistinguishable."

"It was curious that, in facing the man, I felt none of the distaste one has for an abnormality."

"No discovery is good or evil until men make it that way."

"“Lady,” he said, “some place there’s several freight cars of trouble marked 'Rush', and they’re all headed your way.”"

"Other things than to fight, there is, even for dragons."

"In the profession of wifehood the exams begin at the church door—and there is never a final degree."

"Was she a bit mad?" "Mad? Oh, no - unless you would call a failure to grow up a kind of madness - in which case there would be very few sane people."

"Dying," observed the doctor, "is such a very ordinary thing to do."

"Sooner or later the amateur always overreaches himself."

"I'd begun to grasp the principle that the less anybody knows, the less any squealer can give away. And it was easy to see that in a place where questioning was liable to assume the aspect of a blood-sport, the less one did know about other people's business, the better."

"I guess——" she said, wistfully—"I guess the only thing that's wrong with children is that they grow up to be people like you."

"And there was another thing, too. No matter what your business is, some gals ain't got no standard of affection except how much you neglect it for 'em. Seems they just got to back themselves against it—and they got it all nicely fixed so they win both ways. If you don't neglect it, you ain't lovin' them enough; if you do, they reckoned you were that kind of sap, anyway."

"I suppose one could scarcely have had innocence and experience. Being young is very exhausting and unsatisfactory, really—although it looks so nice."

""But if they change me shape, and change me voice, and change me hair and change me face, as they say, what is it that is me, at all?" asked Peggy."

"There is a sense of reason's fingernails scrabbling to keep their hold, as one slides towards something which is not accountable; not, by ordinary standards, quite sane..."