Nevil Shute Quotes

Tell us,’ she said gently. ‘Would you like to grow up with horses? Or would you rather buy things and sell them for a profit?’ After all, she thought, it would be difficult for him to go against the c...

You just said you couldn’t stand Willstown,’ he objected. ‘Burketown and Croydon – well, they’re just the same.’ ‘I know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’m not being very reasonable, am I? First I say I co...

Before she had been a year at Ford Janet came to look forward to her next pass with something close to apprehension; it was pitiful to see her mother ageing and be unable to help her, to see her fathe...

Finally he got up, feeling uncommonly well. It did not occur to him that this was because he had a job to do, for the first time in many months.

Half a thou too small, he said. The difference between Right and Wrong. Half a thou bigger, and it’ld be Right. As it is, it’s Wrong, and you can’t cheat about it. He smiled again. Too bad when God gi...

I had travelled the world and I had come to realise, in faint surprise, that I had seen no countryside that could compare in pastoral beauty with that of my own home. It takes a long time for an Austr...

I never was in such a horrid office . . . It's not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it?

I still think Connie was a human man, a very, very good one—but a man. I have been wrong in my judgments many times before; if now I am ignorant and blind, I’m sorry, but it’s no new thing. If that sh...

I want to drink hard liquor, as you call it, before lunch. I've got a mouth like the bottom of the parrot's cage. You wouldn't want me to throw a screaming fit in front of all your officers.

Okay,’ said Jack phlegmatically. ‘Be seeing you.’ Friends and women, he knew, never really mixed.

Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it.

This may have been what John and I were brought together for,’ she said. ‘In thirty years the world may need one of these little ones.’ She paused. ‘It may be Ronnie or it may be Willem, or it may be...

A placard nailed upon a post, CHIEN MECHANT, warned him, but did not warn the children. The dog, an enormous brindled creature, leaped out at them to the limit of his chain, raising a terrific clamour...

He said, The spring was good enough for their mothers and their grandmothers before them. They will get ideas above their station in life if they have a well. She

I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do Please be careful.Don't worry about me, he said. You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we jus...

I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.

Into the world of romance, of make-belief and double brandies!

So let them pass, small people of no great significance, caught up and swept together like dead leaves in the great whirlwind of the war.

Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you're going to lose before you start. It's fun just playing them.

You did not die when you were drawing public assistance money, but you certainly did not remain alive.