💬 Quotes

"Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel."

"The heart heaved with conflicting emotions, of joy and sorrow, when I looked round on my children. They were bought, indeed; but then they were inexorably chained to my fate."

"Seven years I hid in that dingy hole, cheered only by the hope of better days. I am not telling a fictitious tale. Often I am physically exhausted with the hard struggle I have had for life."

"When they told me that my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women."

"Doubtless, however, there is such a thing as pre-adaptation, whether from the immediate action of the all-wise Deity, or from the operation of successive laws, which evolve progressive perfection, I will not stop to inquire."

"As it is a principle of polity with the Vril-ya that society should be so carried on that each member of it may condole with all the rest, so it is their principle also that no man should be the exact duplicate of his neighbor."

"The light is ever of the same intensity, never waning and never waxing, never flickering and never shadowless; so that no happier alternative for rural scenery can be conceived than that which is beheld by the inhabitants of the Vril-ya."

"We are taught to look upon the Vril-ya as the blind instruments of a destiny which sooner or later must hurl us from our supremacy, and replace the children of Adam by a race superior to our own."

"It is true, that the overwhelming majority of this people are of the gentler sex; for the males are born in a much smaller proportion, a circumstance which I have been told is common to all the superior races in this subterranean world."

"It is not then by the force of arms that the Vril-ya claim their dominion, but by the agency of that All-containing fluid which they call Vril; combining the most potent elements of utility and destruction."

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it."

"Machinery is accomplishing what toil was intended to accomplish so long ago. It is taking off the burdens of men and giving them a chance at life."

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business."

"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."

"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed."

"Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again."

"I call an animal, a species, a individual corrupt when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is detrimental to it."

"What is the sign of freedom? To no longer be ashamed of oneself."

"Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection."

"God is a word that designates all that is crooked, all that is to be mistrusted, all that is an enemy of life."