The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.

The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior.

The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.

The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice

The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran—a grotesque mingling of profit and panic.

For all my desire to be interesting, I have to confess that for most things and people I don't give a damn.

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.