Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
H. G. WellsRead
I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the realization of death's omnipresence and its impact on humanity.
In this quote, H. G. Wells illustrates a moment of profound awareness where the speaker observes a crowd, not yet fully grasping that death is an inevitable force connecting all human beings. It serves as a contemplation on the fragility of life and how death can suddenly invade moments of normalcy, prompting a deeper reflection on existence and mortality.
In practice
During a memorial service, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing the fragility of life.
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
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.
Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.
Thats what I love about serving God. In His eyes, there are no little people...because there are no big people. We are all on the same playing field
Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.
The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds.
Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.