This little figure, this minute little figure, launched the Food of the Gods upon the world! One does not know which is the most amazing, the greatness or the littleness of these scientific and philosophical men.
Book 1904
The Food of the Gods quotes
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About the book
Two mild-mannered London scientists invent a substance that makes living things keep growing, and careless handling of it soon lets loose giant wasps, rats and plants on the English countryside. As children fed on the Food grow into giants, ordinary society turns fearful and hostile. Wells uses the tale to satirize science, politics and human pettiness, and to ask whether growth and change can be held back.
7 quotes
For greatness is abroad, not only in us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the nature of all things; it is part of space and time. To grow and still to grow: from first to last that is Being — that is the law of life. What other…
We fight not for ourselves but for growth — growth that goes on for ever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and…
Tremendous growths will obscure and hide our houses, smother our churches, smash and destroy all the order of our cities, and we shall become no more than a feeble vermin under the heels of the new race. Mankind will be swamped and drowned in things of its…
Of course we are. Obviously. Each man for his own time. … We do our job and go. See? That is what death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple.
What right have parents to say, My child shall have no light but the light I have had, shall grow no greater than the greatness to which I have grown?
In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are very properly called, but who dislike extremely to be…