H. G. Wells (1866–1946,) fully Herbert George Wells, was an English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian. His reputation rests on his pioneering science fiction books and comic novels. One of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Wells is regarded as the chief literary spokesperson of the liberal optimism that preceded World War I.
Born in Bromley, Kent, Wells studied biology with Thomas Henry Huxley and was a biology lecturer before becoming a novelist. He produced in 50 years a body of work that includes more than 40 novels, political, sociological, and philosophical treatises, textbooks and histories, autobiographies and biographies, journalism and letters, as well as his scientific romances and some 70 short stories.
The most artistically fruitful period of Wells’s career spans the first 15 years, during which time he wrote his best short fiction such as The Time Machine (1895,) The Invisible Man (1897,) and The War of the Worlds (1898,) and almost all of his collections of short stories. This combined political satire, warnings about the dangerous new powers of science, and hope for the future.
Wells’s realistic novels, considered his most exceptional achievement, include Tono-Bungay (1909) and The History of Mr. Polly (1910.) Among his other works are A Modern Utopia (1905) and The Outline of History (1920.) Experiment in Autobiography (1934) includes a striking self-portrait and studies of friends and contemporaries.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by H. G. Wells
Let your love be stronger than your hate or anger. Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little than to break.
—H. G. Wells
In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Reform, Correction
The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard it ceases to be anything more than “the gang in possession,” and its days are numbered.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Government
Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Religion
While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Joy
Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Evolution
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.
—H. G. Wells
One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Goodness
The religion of the atheist has a God-shaped blank at it’s heart
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Atheism
Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions, great or small.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Suffering
Go away, I’m all right!
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Solitude
He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Patriotism
Cynicism is humor in ill health.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Cynicism
Hunger makes a fool of a man.
—H. G. Wells
The future is the shape of things to come.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
To be honest, one must be inconsistent.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Forgiveness, Consistency, Change
I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Time, Time Management
Our true nationality is mankind.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Racism, Race, Nationalism
The past is but the past of a beginning.
—H. G. Wells
First we shall want the pupil to understand, speak, read, and write his mother tongue well.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Education
Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Adversity
History is a race between education and catastrophe.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Historians, History
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Acceptance, Nature, Change
Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life.
—H. G. Wells
It is good to be a part of life. Just as a sundial counts only the sunny hours, so does life know only that it is living.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Life
The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Resilience, Tomorrow, Crises, Jokes, The Future, Time
Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm
—H. G. Wells
Topics: The Universe
There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Appearance
Go away…I’m alright.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Last Words, Famous Last Words
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Reflection, Past
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