Selected Passages
These sentences were chosen for Today's Passage: lines worth reading slowly, returning to, and turning into copywork.
From Today's Passage
XIII. The Trap of the White Sphinx
There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.
A comfortable world may look peaceful while its deeper powers fall asleep. Ease becomes unsettling when nothing is left to awaken the mind.
VI. The Sunset of Mankind
Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.
Need sharpens strength; safety can soften it. A sheltered life may lose powers that difficulty once kept awake.
VI. The Sunset of Mankind
Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!
A neat explanation is not always a true one. The mind often prefers plausibility before it is ready for understanding.
I. Introduction
We are always getting away from the present moment.
The present is hard to inhabit when the mind is always escaping it. Even a journey into the future can begin as an evasion of now.
X. When Night Came
“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.
The stars can make private troubles feel small without making them false. Wonder gives perspective, not escape.
VI. The Sunset of Mankind
Everything was so entirely different from the world I had known—even the flowers.
Beauty can disguise danger when everything is new. A strange world may welcome the eye before it reveals what lives beneath it.
VII. A Sudden Shock
I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a strange animal in an unknown world.
Loneliness is deepest when it cuts across time, language, and kind. Discovery can become exile when no familiar life remains nearby.
XVI. After the Story
They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can’t stand another that won’t fit.
Some dreams become unbearable because waking offers no relief. The mind can be trapped between realities that no longer fit.
XV. The Time Traveller’s Return
I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream.
Some experiences feel dreamlike because the mind cannot yet make room for them. The unreal is sometimes reality arriving too fast.
VII. A Sudden Shock
Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me?
Fear becomes more real when we ask another person to imagine it with us. Some shocks need a witness before they can be borne.
IV. Time Travelling
I felt naked in a strange world.
A strange world can strip away every familiar protection. Sometimes we feel most human when everything human seems far away.
IV. Time Travelling
I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote future.
Curiosity can soften fear when panic begins to loosen. Understanding often starts the moment the unknown becomes interesting.
VII. A Sudden Shock
I do not remember all I did as the moon crept up the sky.
Fear can scatter memory into fragments. Under moonlight, the mind may remember less than the body endured.
XII. In the Darkness
I lit none of my matches because I had no hand free.
A match is a small civilization held between the fingers. Fear becomes immediate when light, time, and safety are all running out.
XIII. The Trap of the White Sphinx
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.
Habit can carry life for a long time, until it fails. Intelligence wakes when instinct no longer knows the way.
II. The Machine
I was never more serious in my life.
There are experiences too serious to survive as entertainment. Wonder becomes lonely when no one believes the thing that changed you.
XII. In the Darkness
I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul.
When the last small fire goes out, fear becomes absolute. Civilization can feel as fragile as one flame in the dark.
XVI. After the Story
I knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be.
Before explanation returns, the mind stands bewildered before what has happened. Strangeness is sometimes the first honest name for truth.
X. When Night Came
I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them.
A distant fear becomes different once it feels close behind the body. Some dangers change us when they stop being ideas and start following us.
IX. The Morlocks
I don’t know if you will understand my feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back.
A distant fear becomes different once it feels close behind the body. Some dangers change us when they stop being ideas and start following us.