No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing,… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh,… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
The universe now appeared to me as a void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe. — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
That strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad. — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit... We die praising the universe in which at least… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
Myriads of individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse with one another, contribute their heart's pulses to the… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
The expansion of the whole cosmos was but the shrinkage of all its physical units and of the wavelengths of light. — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
In fact man's career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken very seldom… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
I loathe the urchin's cruelty to the cat, but I will not loathe the urchin. I loathe Hitler's mass-torturing, but not Hitler; and the… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
“We are bound to hurt one another so much, again and again. we are so terribly different.''Yes,' he said, 'But the more different, the… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
Without Satan, with God only, how poor a universe, how trite a music! — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
I see, indeed I know, that in some sense God is love, and God is wisdom, and God is creative action, yes and God… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
“With characteristic lack of false modesty, John once said to me, "My looks are a rough test of people. If they don't begin to… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
[S]ervants of darkness had no lasting joy in their service. In all of them the will for darkness was a perversion of the will… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
“The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain physical miracle could ever be. But never mind that.… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image
The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a sham faith… — Olaf Stapledon Copy Share Image