On The Beach

The Nevil Shute edition

Photo by Chor Tsang on Unsplash

“Don’t worry—it may never happen.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.”
― Nevil Shute, Round the Bend

“I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Without work, men are utterly undone.”
― Nevil Shute, Ruined City

“I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do please be careful."
"Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over.”
― Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice

“Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you're going to lose before you start. It's fun just playing them.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”
― Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice

“You know," he said, "now that I've got used to the idea, I think I'd rather have it this way. We've all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you're never ready, because you don't know when it's coming. Well, now we do know, and there's nothing to be done about it. I kind of like that. I kind of like the thought that I'll be fit and well up till the end of August and then - home. I'd rather have it that way than go on as a sick man from when I'm seventy to when I'm ninety.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“If what they say is right, we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“You can call a sunset by a filthy name, but you do not spoil its beauty, monsieur.”
― Nevil Shute, Pied Piper

“There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today.”
― Nevil Shute, Ruined City

“You could have done something with newspapers. We didn't do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no Government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we'd been wise enough.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“But he got to his feet, his brows contacted in a frown. "You weren't speaking seriously?"
I moved towards the door, "It doesn't pay to be serious," I said. "It only means that people laugh behind your back, instead of to your face.”
― Nevil Shute, Lonely Road

“Even into this quiet place the war had reached like the tentacle of an octopus and had touched this girl and brought about her death. Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.”
― Nevil Shute, The Breaking Wave

“The news did not trouble her particularly; all news was bad, like wage demands, strikes, or war, and the wise person paid no attention to it. What was important was that it was a bright, sunny day; her first narcissi were in bloom, and the daffodils behind them were already showing flower buds.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“All those cities, all those fields and farms, with nobody, and nothing left alive. Just nothing there. I simply can't take it in.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“There are some things about oneself that it’s not very nice to wake up to.”
― Nevil Shute, Requiem for a Wren

“Into the world of romance, of make-belief and double brandies!”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“So let them pass, small people of no great significance, caught up and swept together like dead leaves in the great whirlwind of the war.”
― Nevil Shute, Landfall

“He was one of that great class of Englishmen who love their wives and trust them unquestioningly with their money and their honour, but are apt to hedge a little over their motor-cars.”
― Nevil Shute, Stephen Morris

“I mean, why waste time in sleeping?” She laughed, a little shrilly. “Just doesn’t make sense.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Only the drunks remained, reeling down the pavements aimlessly or lying down to sleep.”
― Nevil Shute, Norway, On The Beach

“I couldn’t bear to—to just stop doing things and do nothing. You might as well die now and get it over.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Here they go cruising for a fortnight up in parts where everyone is dead of radiation, and all that they can catch is measles!”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“One grows old unknowingly. One accepts the passing of years as a phenomenon that has little bearing on one’s personality. And then, quite suddenly, one comes to the realization that one’s contemporaries are growing a little old, falling off a little. One realizes that one’s hair is white.”
― Nevil Shute

“People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had," she said quietly, staring into the embers. "They don't know what it was like, not being in a camp.”
― Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice

“I never was in such a horrid office. It's not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it?”
― Nevil Shute, Ruined City

“This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

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