Quotes by M. P. Shiel

“You don’t know that my books do good?’‘No, I don’t know. I know that men are already getting past “novels” without novelty, and that, as soon as women cease to be children, the last “novel” will be written. Yours are entertaining, I believe”

“Man is folly itself. Let this one fact only be considered: those same Greeks believed that they alone of the nations possessed the thing they called philosophia”

“Of ignorant people I am accustomed to consider the mere scientist the most ignorant!””

“...Sir Bennett Beaumont! Is he the sort of man you’d send to represent you? (Cries of: “Yes!”) What is he?”

“Between chaos and our shoes wobbles, I tell you, the thinnest film!””

“It was, therefore, mainly by the random workings of winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been brought hither to me. And this was the first direct intimation which I had that the Unseen Powers (whoever and whatever they may be), who through the history of the world had been so very, very careful to conceal their Hand from the eyes of men, hardly any longer intended to be at the pains to conceal their Hand from me.””