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If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.
H. G. Wells
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Approach challenges with creativity and unexpected strategies for better outcomes.

H. G. Wells suggests that when faced with difficulties, particularly in understanding or engaging with a book, adopting an unconventional approach—such as tackling it at unexpected times—can lead to breakthroughs. This quote encourages readers to think outside the box and embrace surprise as a tool for overcoming obstacles in learning.

Themes

ReadingSurpriseCreativityLearningBook Difficulties

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech for students struggling with their studies, you could say this quote to encourage them to change their approach.

More from H. G. Wells

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
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He spares no resource in telling of his dead inventions... Bare verbs he rarely tolerates. He splits infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing. He presses the passing colloquialism into his service. His vast paragraphis sweat and struggle; the
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It [a new world order] needs only that the governments of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Russia should get together in order to set up an effective control of currency, credit, production, and distribution – that is to say, an effective ‘dictatorship of prosperity,’ for the whole world. The other sixty odd States would have to join in or accommodate themselves to the over-ruling decisions of these major Powers.
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Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily.
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But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours - that's another matter.
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The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.
H. G. WellsRead

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