Best 29 quotes of Nevil Shute on MyQuotes

Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes - not yet, anyhow.

Everybody pays lip service to the safety of the aeroplane, but nobody is prepared to pay for it.

If I have learned one thing in my 54 years, it is that it is very good for the character to engage in sports which put your life in danger from time to time. It breeds a saneness in dealing with day to day trivialities which probably cannot be got in any other way, and a habit of quick decisions.

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?

It has been said that an engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound; if that be so, we were certainly engineers.

It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.

Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.

Remember that the Clerget lands very fast, at over forty miles an hour, and with that great engine in the nose the tail was light. Watch it... Lovely.

She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done." "That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it.

There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today.

The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work.

To put your life in danger from time to time... breeds a saneness in dealing with day-to-day trivialities.

You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.

Here they go cruising for a fortnight up in parts where everyone is dead of radiation, and all that they can catch is measles!

I didn't wait to see her ship go off, because partings are stupid things and best got over quickly

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.

it was so beautiful', he said. 'the Three Pagodas Pass must be one of the loveliest places in the world. you've got this broad valley with the river running down it, and the jungle forest, and the mountains....we used to sit by the river and watch the sun setting behind the mountains, sometimes, and say what a marvellous place it would be to come to for a holiday. however terrible a prison camp may be, it makes a difference if its beautiful.

I want to drink hard liquor, as you call it, before lunch. I've got a mouth like the bottom of the parrot's cage. You wouldn't want me to throw a screaming fit in front of all your officers.

Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this," he said. The scientist said, "That's absolutely and precisely right.

Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.

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.

She had known for some time that his wife and family were very real to him, more real by far than the half-life in a far corner of the world that had been forced upon him since the war.

She lived in the dream world of unreality, or else she would not admit reality; he did not know. In any case, he loved her as she was. It might never be used, but it would give her pleasure to have it.

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.

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.

There are some things about oneself that it’s not very nice to wake up to.

Until we’re dead, we Service people, the world will always be in danger of another war. We had too good a time in the last one. We’ll none of us come out into the open and admit it. It might be better for us if we did. [...] For our generation, the war years were the best time of our lives, not because they were war years but because we were young. The best years of our lives happened to be war years. Everyone looks back at the time when they were in their early twenties with nostalgia, but when we look back we only see the war. We had a fine time then, and so we think that if a third war came we’d have those happy, carefree years all over again. I don’t suppose we would—some of us might.

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.

You did not die when you were drawing public assistance money, but you certainly did not remain alive.