George R. Stewart Quotes & Sayings

There had been many definitions of Man; he would make another: "The noise-producing animal." Now there was only the nearly imperceptible murmur of his own engine. He had no need to blow the horn. There were no back-firing trucks, no snorting trains, no pounding planes overhead. In the little towns no whistles blew or bells rang or radios blared or people talked. Even if it was the peace of death, still that was a kind of peace. — George R. Stewart

A notable bacteriologist indicated that the emergence of some new disease had always been a possibility which had worried the more far-thinking epidemiologists. — George R. Stewart

The original route, whether called U. S. 40 or something else, will furnish the main-traveled road until someone disproves the geometrical proposition that a straight line is the shortest distance between points. — George R. Stewart

It has never happened!" cannot be construed to mean, "It can never happen!" - as — George R. Stewart

Crusoe's religious preoccupations seemed boring and rather silly. — George R. Stewart

Yes," he said, "but we are on the ground here; this is our place; he comes breaking in; he must adapt himself to us; not we to him. — George R. Stewart

Man has been growing more stupid for several thousand years; I myself shall waste no tears at his demise. — George R. Stewart

History was an artist, maintaining the idea but changing the details, like a composer keeping the same theme but dulling it to a minor or lifting by an octave, now crooning it with violins, now blaring it on trumpets. — George R. Stewart

Men go and come, but the earth abides — George R. Stewart

Then, though his sight was now very dim, he looked again at the young men. "They will commit me to the earth," he thought. "Yet I also commit them to the earth. There is nothing else by which men live. Men go and come, but earth abides. — George R. Stewart

It is a strange thing," he thought, "to be an old god. They worship you, and yet they mistreat you. If you do not want to do what they wish, they make you. It is not fair. — George R. Stewart

Men have been growing more stupid for several thousand years; I myself shall waste no tears at his demise'- old British man in Earth Abides — George R. Stewart

The trouble you're expecting never happens; it's always something that sneaks up the other way. — George R. Stewart

He started to engage the gears, and then suddenly paused with a feeling of uneasiness. He did not regret leaving his own car, but still something worried him. In a moment he remembered. He went back to his old car, and took out the hammer. He carries it over to the station wagon and laid it at his feet. Then he drove out of the garage. — George R. Stewart

As we must always remember, the most important freight that a road carries may be neither household goods, nor livestock, nor munitions of war - but ideas! — George R. Stewart

It's better," he thought in words, remembering some bit of reading, "to have no opinion of God at all than to have one that is unworthy of Him. — George R. Stewart

After the sudden release of the laughter, he was trembling. All his body seemed growing weak. He felt, almost physically, more barriers breaking
those necessary barriers of defense, built up through the months of loneliness and desperation. He must touch another human being, and he put forward his hand in the old conventional gesture of the handshake. She took it, and doubtless as she noticed his trembling, she drew him toward a chair and almost pushed him into it. As he sat down, she patted his shoulder lightly.
She spoke again, once more neither questioning nor commanding: "I'll get you something to eat."
He did not protest, though he had just eaten heartily. But he knew that behind her quiet affirmation lay something more than any call of the body for food. There was need now for the symbolic eating together, that first common bond of human beings
the sitting at the same table, the sharing of bread and salt. — George R. Stewart

Men go and come, but earth abides. — George R. Stewart

If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes - as George says - at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again - the angry God, the mean God - the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back. — George R. Stewart

You used to have the jokes about never fixing the roof until it rained. People were undoubtedly the same now, or worse. They might well wait until something happened that forced them to act; that something would almost certainly be unpleasant - most likely, serious. Yet — George R. Stewart

Genius is the capacity for seeing what is not there. Of course, like every other definition of genius, that one could be shot to pieces also, because it obviously included the madman, as well as the genius. Yet there might be something in it, too; the great thinkers of the world must necessarily have made their reputations by sensing what was not there and looking for it and discovering it, but the first requisite for making the discovery, unless it depended upon mere luck, was the realization that something unseen was there to be discovered, something lacking in the picture. — George R. Stewart

Because I've never died, I am immortal. — George R. Stewart

Why we Americans should be so dendrophilic in our homes, and so dendrophobic in our business-districts is another subject of study which should be referred to our anthropologists. — George R. Stewart

The situation was much as if some profit-making organizations had grafted themselves upon the public-school system. — George R. Stewart

When the opportunity was at your hand, you did not dare to seize it. When the opportunity was lost, it became precious. — George R. Stewart

The people who live in any generation do much, he realized, either to create or to solve the problems for the people who come in the generations later. — George R. Stewart

In that world, those with seeing eyes could only blunder about, but the blind man would be at home, and now instead of being the one who was guided by others, he might be one the one to whom the others clung for guidance. — George R. Stewart

As for man, there is little reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens. — George R. Stewart

A certain amount of looting, particularly of liquor stores was reported. — George R. Stewart

As once, when the armies of the empire were shattered and the strong barbarians poured in upon the soft provincials, so now the fierce weeds pressed in to destroy the pampered nursling's of man. — George R. Stewart