Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
Interpretation
Intelligence is often only utilized in the face of necessity for change when habits and instincts fail.
In this quote, H. G. Wells suggests that people typically rely on instinct and established habits until they encounter a situation that demands intellectual engagement. It implies that true intelligence is ignited by the need for change, highlighting the relationship between the necessity for adaptation and the application of thought and reason.
In practice
In a speech about climate change, you might use this quote to highlight the need for intelligence in tackling environmental issues.
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
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.
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.
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.
The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.
I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view - get hot, juicy, red - like a grilled chop. Get me on that machine and I have to go. I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it.
As a young boy, I was obsessed with endangered species and the extinct species that men killed off. Biology was the subject in school that I was incredibly passionate about.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
For nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
I need beaches, and blackness, and moonlit nakedness.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
'Tis spring; come out to ramble_x000D_ _x000D_ The hilly brakes around,_x000D_ _x000D_ For under thorn and bramble_x000D_ _x000D_ About the hollow ground_x000D_ _x000D_ The primroses are found._x000D_ _x000D_ And there's the windflower chilly_x000D_ _x000D_ With all the winds at play,_x000D_ _x000D_ And there's the Lenten lily_x000D_ _x000D_ That has not long to stay_x000D_ _x000D_ And dies on Easter day.
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