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
The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays golf—it’s almost a law.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Golf
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 future is the shape of things to come.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: The Future, Tomorrow
Cynicism is humor in ill health.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Cynicism
Go away…I’m alright.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Last Words, Famous Last Words
Human society is based on want. Life is based on want. Wild-eyed visionaries may dream of a world without need. Cloud-cuckoo-land. It can’t be done.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Desires
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
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: Past, Reflection
Hunger makes a fool of a man.
—H. G. Wells
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
I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.
—H. G. Wells
Moral indignation is just jealousy with a halo around it.
—H. G. Wells
In the scientific world I find just that disinterested devotion to great ends that I hope will spread at last through the entire range of human activity.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Knowledge, Science
When a man realizes his littleness,
his greatness can appear.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Self-Knowledge
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Acceptance, Nature, Change
Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world.
—H. G. Wells
His studies were pursued but never effectually overtaken.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Learning
The past is but the past of a beginning.
—H. G. Wells
The religion of the atheist has a God-shaped blank at it’s heart
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Atheism
The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Thinking
The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Patriotism
The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Heaven
Advertising is legalized lying.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Advertising, Media
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
Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Night
The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Jokes, The Future, Crises, Time, Resilience, Tomorrow
Our true nationality is mankind.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Nationalism, Racism, Race
Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Criminals, Crime
One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.
—H. G. Wells
Topics: Goodness
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