Quotes from George R. Stewart

Amo esta soledad, lejos de los problemas de la vida en común.

Though the centuries have passed since Koheleth looked upon all things and found them fickle as wind, yet still we know little of what goes to the making of a man—least surely of all, why usually there issue forth only those who see what is, and why rarely, now and then, there comes forth among them the chosen one, Child of the Blessing, who sees not what is, but sees what is not, and seeing thus what is not, imagines also what may be. Yet without this rare one all men are as beasts.

Because I've never died, I am immortal.

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.

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

He himself would have had only the courage to live on, feeling death creep in closer year by year as once the darkness had crept in from the corners of the room when the lights were failing. ... He had known despair, but now he knew hope. He looked forward with confidence to the time when the sun would again be setting at the southern end of its long arc... It was not finished. The thing would go on.

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!

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.

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.

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

Between the plan and the fulfillment lies always the hazard: heartbeat flutters, knife flashes, horse stumbles, cancer grows, more subtle foes invade

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

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.

It can never happen!"—as well say, "Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable," or "Because I've never died, I am immortal.

It has never happened!" cannot be construed to mean, "It can never happen!"—as

trouble you're expecting never happens; it's always something that sneaks up the other way.

For though despair is often close at hand, it never triumphs, and through all the story runs, a sustaining bond, the primal force which humanity shares with all earthly creatures, the sheer will to live.

Me, I only try. I'm not one like Moses, or Solon—or, or—Lycurgus.

Here they had been for twenty-one years merely using water that continued to flow, and yet they had never given any real consideration to where the water came from.

En cuanto al ser humano, no debe esperarse que escape, en su larga trayectoria, a la suerte de los animales inferiores. Si hay una ley biológica de flujo y reflujo, su situación es ahora muy peligrosa. Durante diez mil años su número ha aumentado constantemente a pesar de las guerras, las pestes y las hambres. Biológicamente, la prosperidad del ser humano es demasiado larga.

But whether the new would follow the course which the old had followed, that he did not know, and now at last he was almost certain that he did not even desire that the cycle should be repeated. He suddenly thought of all that had gone to build civilization--of slavery and conquest and war and oppression.

A friend doubles joys and cuts griefs in half'?

If I try for something less I may in the end attain something more

he was a reader and so had still available an important means of relaxation and escape.