Nevil Shute Quotes

Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this, he said.The scientist said, That's absolutely and precisely right.

Without work men are utterly undone.

He sank into an apathy of heat and dust and sweat, and joined the morose ten per cent of men in South Fast Asia Command whose wives had let them down.

I think dogs need our prayers more than people. We know that God looks after people when they die and that Daddy and Mummy and Bill are all right, but we don’t know that about dogs.

If what they say is right we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.

Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.

Most jobs are interesting when you are learning them,’ I said.

There are some things about oneself that it’s not very nice to wake up to.

You could have done something with newspapers. We didn't do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent...

Jerry stood the old man to a glass of mild, and asked, What do you think of all these Americans in Trenarth, Mr Parsons? The ancient piped in his old quavering voice, I like them very well; oh, very w...

Mr Parkinson told him what was his due. On your salary scale, the firm gives three months’ sick leave on full pay. Then if you are still unfit for work, another three months on half pay.

Round the next corner and in the next street Adventure lies in wait for you. Oh, who can tell what you may meet Round the next corner and in the next street! Could life be anything but sweet When all...

You felt to look at him that he would be wonderful upon a horse. I

Even into this quiet place the war had reached like the tentacle of an octopus and had touched this girl and brought about her death. Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go...

He is a good man, and will climb up to the Six Blissful Seats. He has known sin and trouble and it has not made him bitter; he has known sorrow and it has not made him sad. In these last months that h...

He met the femme de chambre upon the landing. ‘I have made up my mind,’ he said heavily. ‘La petite Rose may come with us to England; I will take her to her father. She must be ready to start to-morro...

You don’t feel any different as you get older. Only, you can’t do so much.

You know, he said, now that I've got used to the idea, I think I'd rather have it this way. We've all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you're never read...

And then, Monsieur votre fils, he was well too? Well, they had to know. He turned away from her blindly. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘mon fils est mort. Il est tombé de son avion, au-dessus de Heligoland Bight...

He did not display his locomotive or his traction engine to his fellow professors, fearing that if he did so he would not be taken seriously when he spoke on mediaeval poetry.