Top Olaf Stapledon Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Olaf Stapledon Biography

William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

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Olaf Stapledon Quotes

That strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad.

Abroad, Barbarian, Barbarians, Conqueror, Missionary, Olaf

Myriads of individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse with one another, contribute their heart's pulses to the universal music, and presently vanish, giving place to others. All this age-long sequence of private living, which is the actual tissue of humanity's flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as it were, the disembodied form of its growth.

Actual, Heart, Individuals, Intercourse, Long, Unique

Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?

Cold, Exploded, Frozen, Gone, Time

In man, social intercourse has centred mainly on the process of absorbing fluid into the organism, but in the domestic dog and to a lesser extent among all wild canine species, the act charged with most social significance is the excretion of fluid.

Act, Centred, Dog, Fluid, Men, Social

To say that the cosmos was expanding is equally to say that its members were contracting. The ultimate centers of power, each at first coincident. . . themselves generated the cosmical space by their disengagement from each other.

Centers, Cosmos, Firsts, Members, Space

The cosmos exploded, actualizing its potentiality of space and time. The centers of power, like fragments of a bursting bomb, were hurled apart. But each one retained in itself, as a memory and a longing, the single point of the whole; and each mirrored in itself aspects of all the others throughout all the cosmical space and time.

Cosmos, Memories, Mirrored, Point, Space

It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. . . We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be.

Achievement, Triumph, Olaf, Slaying, Spirit

This kind of internal "telepathic" intercourse, which was to serve me in all my wanderings, was at first difficult, innefective, and painful. But in time I came to be able to live through the experiences of my host with vividness and accuracy, while yet preserving my own individuality, my own critical intelligence, my own desires and fears. Only when the other had come to realize my presence within him could he, by a special act of volition, keep particular thoughts secret from me.

Act, Desire, Individuality, Secret, Time

In a sick world even the hale are sick.

Hale, Sick, Sick World, World

It is enough to have been created, to have embodied for a moment the infinite and tumultuously creative spirit. It is infinitely more than enough to have been used, to have been the rough sketch for some perfected creation. Looking into the future, I saw without sorrow, rather with quiet interest, my own decline and fall.

Creative, Fall, Future, Infinitely, Perfected, Sorrow

[S]ervants of darkness had no lasting joy in their service. In all of them the will for darkness was a perversion of the will for the light. In all but a few maniacs the satisfaction of the will for darkness was at all times countered by a revulsion which the unhappy spirit either dared not confess even to itself, or else rejected as cowardly and evil.

Confess, Evil, Joy, Lasting, Light, Perversion

Sooner or later for good or ill, a united mankind, equipped with science and power, will probably turn its attention to the other planets, not only for economic exploitation, but also as possible homes for man. . . . The goal for the solar system would seem to be that it should become an interplanetary community of very diverse worlds. . . . Through the pooling of this wealth of experience, through this 'commonwealth of worlds,' new levels of mental and spiritual development should become possible, levels at present quite inconceivable to man.

Home, Mankind, Men, Mental, Power, Spiritual

He should avail himself of their resources in such ways as to advance the expression of the spirit in the life of mankind. He should use them so as to afford to every human being the greatest possible opportunity for developing and expressing his distinctively human capacity as an instrument of the spirit, as a centre of sensitive and intelligent awareness of the objective universe, as a centre of love of all lovely things, and of creative action for the spirit.

Action, Greatest, Inspirational, Instrument, Life, Opportunity

The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a sham faith cannot stand ridicule.

Bright, Disconcerted, Frustration, Government, Governments, Laughing

I spent on the Other Earth many "other years," wandering from mind to mind and country to country, but I did not gain any clear understanding of the psychology of the Other Men and the significance of their history till I encountered one of their philosophers, an aging but still vigorous man whose eccentric and unpalatable views had prevented him from attaining eminence.

Country, Earth, Men, Views, Wandering

No visiting angel could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

Angel, Angelic, Earth, Orb, Self, World

Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a star kills. He is greater than those bright blind companies. For though in them there is incalculable potentiality, in him there is achievement, small, but actual. Too soon, seemingly, he comes to his end. But when he is done he will not be nothing, not as though he had never been; for he is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things.

Conceived, Done, Eternally, Men, Nothing, Stars

Henceforth the cosmos, once a swarm of blazing galaxies, each a swarm of stars, was composed wholly of star-corpses. These dark grains drifted through the dark void, like an infinitely tenuous smoke rising from an extinguished fire. Upon these motes, these gigantic worlds, the ultimate populations had created here and there with their artificial lighting a pale glow, invisible even from the innermost ring of lifeless planets.

Dark, Fire, Gigantic, Planets, Stars, Void

The expansion of the whole cosmos was but the shrinkage of all its physical units and of the wavelengths of light.

Cosmos, Expansion, Light, Shrinkage, Whole

My dear, it is a great strength to have faced the worst and to have *felt* it a feature of beauty. Nothing ever after can shake one.

Dear, Ever After, Feature, Nothing, Strength, Worst

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