The Time Machine quotes

We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and it seemed to me that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!

— Spoken by a character · VI. The Sunset of Mankind

Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.

— Spoken by a character · VI. The Sunset of Mankind

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!

— Spoken by a character · VI. The Sunset of Mankind

There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

— Spoken by a character · XIII. The Trap of the White Sphinx

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been.

— Spoken by a character · XIII. The Trap of the White Sphinx

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.

— Spoken by a character · I. Introduction

There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.

— Spoken by a character · I. Introduction

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.

— Spoken by a character · XIII. The Trap of the White Sphinx

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.

— Spoken by a character · X. When Night Came

But to me the future is still black and blank—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story.

I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.

— Spoken by a character · X. When Night Came