"Hobbies are convenient in the child, but irritant in the adult; which is why women are careful never to have them, but simply to be interested in this and that."

"'Do you never work? Does nobody work?' I asked Clytassamine. 'Oh yes - if he wants to,' she said. 'But what about the unpleasant things - the things that must be done?' 'What things?' she asked, puzzled. 'Well, growing food, providing power, disposing of waste, all that kind of thing.' She looked surprised. 'Why, naturally, the machines do all that. You wouldn't expect men to do those things. Good heavens, what have we got brains for?" 'But who looks after the machines - keeps them in order?' 'Themselves, of course.'"

"'But how can you stand it - just going on and on?' It is not easy sometimes - and some of us do give up, but that is a crime, because there is always chance. And it's not quite so monotonous as you think. Each transfer makes a difference. You feel as if the world had become a different place then. The spirit rises in you like sap in spring. . . . And those glands you think so much of are not entirely without effect, because you are never quite the same person with quite the same tastes. Even in one body tastes can change quite a lot in one lifetime, and they inevitably differ slightly between bodies. But you are the same person, you have your memory, yet you are young again, you're hopeful, the world looks brighter, you think you'll be wiser this time. . . . And then you fall in love again, just as sweetly and foolishly as before. It's wonderful - like a re-birth. You can only know just how wonderful if you have been fifty and then become twenty.' 'I can guess,' I said."

"Ever seen an old man just sitting in the sun, taking it easy? It doesn't have to mean he's senile. It may do, but very likely he can snap out of it and put his mind to work again if it gets really necessary. But mostly he finds it not worth the bother. Less trouble just to let things happen.'"

"Keeping to an unnecessary programme requires resolution."

"I had only my thoughts to occupy me, and they were not good company."

"It is what has happened, and is happening now, that determines the future. Therefore, there must be a great number of possible futures, each a possible consequence of what is being done now."

"Practically everyone there had had an air of brooding privately with differing intensity. I knew now what it had reminded me of - the outpatients department of a hospital."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"He listened closely, and nodded several times, though not always where a nod seemed appropriate."

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

"Truth is not altered by belief or disbelief."

"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 . . ."

"The frustrations are still buzzing about, and soon they are going to find a new place to swarm."

"Five hundred and eighty-four days is a long time to be stuck on a mudbank."

"There is many a flower which would not be growing if the dung had not happened to fall where it did."

"Most births are painful, and none are pretty."

"The Americans had got into the habit of regarding the moon as a piece of U.S.-bespoken real estate that they would get around to developing when they were ready."

"I found it difficult to believe that they are real people living real lives. For the first day I was constantly accompanied by the feeling that an unseen director would suddenly call 'Cut', and it would all come to a stop."

""Darling, you're talking as if all normal-length lives were planned. They aren't, you know. People have to learn how to live them—and by the time they find out, they're nearly gone. No time to remedy mistakes."

"Look at us—thousands more of us every day. . . In a century or so, we shall be in the Age of Famines. We shall manage to postpone the worst one way and another, but postponement isn't solution, and when the breakdown comes there'll be something so ghastly that the hydrogen-bomb will seem humane by comparison. I'm not romancing. I'm talking about the inevitable time when, unless we do something to stop it, men will be hunting men through ruins, for food. We're letting it drift towards that, with an evil irresponsibility, because with our ordinary short lives we shan't be here to see it. Does our generation care about the misery it is bequeathing? Not it. 'That's their worry,' we say. 'Damn our children's children; we're all right.' ... [...] Like any other animal that overbreeds we shall starve; we shall starve in our millions, in the blackest of all dark ages."

"You owe it to your self-respect to spend a lot of money on yourself."

"If life weren't so short it would be worth people's while to do more to put the world to rights."

"The vitriol throwers and smilers with knives"

"We shan't get homo superior without any birth-pangs."

"One got tired, and not infrequently a little stupid, by the end of a shift."

"I don't understand women. Nobody does. Least of all themselves."

"There is a degree of odds against which a gambler becomes just another mug."

"'If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does. . . .'"

"'The wise lamb does not enrage the lion,' he said. 'It placates him, plays for time, and hopes for the best.'"

"Pretty girls are lovely as the flowers in May, but there are so many flowers in May."

"'Cruelty is as old as life itself.'"

"'In point of fact our ascendancy has been so complete that we are rarely called upon to kill wolves nowadays - in fact, most of us have quite forgotten what it means to have to fight in a personal way against another species. But, when the need arises we have no compunction in fully supporting those who slay the threat whether it is from wolves, insects, bacteria, or filterable viruses; we give no quarter, and certainly expect no pardon.'"

"'And, after all, what is a planet but an island in space?'"

"Life isn't very long. You see that plainly when you begin to look at it from the other end. Not time to do very much."

"There's a type of woman who isn't content until she's made herself some man's slave and doormat—put herself completely in his power."

"'Nobody,' she said, 'nobody but a child, or a child-minded person, expects life to be fair.'"

"My impression was of an uncomfortably industrious place where there always seemed to be more jobs than people, unless one was careful, so on this particular evening I contrived to lie low until routine sounds told me that it was near enough to the mealtime for me to show myself safely."

"Unfortunately there were certain persons with elastic principles."

""This isn't a nice cosy world for anyone—especially not for anyone that's different," he said."

"'The dove is not a coward to fear the hawk; it is simply wise.'"