99 Quotes by Olaf Stapledon

It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer.

In fact man’s career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids.

Somehow, then, I must help you to feel not only the vastness of time and space, but also the vast diversity of mind’s possible modes. But this I can only hint to you, since so much lies wholly beyond the range of your imagination.

If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock and metal, whether man’s blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant tremor, or part of a universal movement!

So great was the mass of information forced upon the student, that he had no time to think of the mutual implications of the various branches of his knowledge.

It would be better even that a great people should be destroyed than that the whole race should be thrown into turmoil.

Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.

Humanity also suffered; though, save in the regions near the seat of war, it was in general only the children and the old people who suffered greatly.

Bvalltu, for such approximately was the philosopher’s name, the “11” being pronounced more or less as in 27 Welsh, Bvalltu effected a “cure” by merely inviting.