So, I literally only read this book because it's "iconic" and a "classic" but I honestly had no expectation of liking it. But, I loved it. I think maybe it's because it's written like a story being told between people and not like a novel. Also I felt like there were points of view, and descriptions that resonated with me and seemed to be directly responsible for modern day stories about time travel. Or, maybe it's just that time travel is the only sub-genre of Science Fiction that I'm interested in. Regardless, i think this was an amazing story, and it's super short so there's honestly no reason everyone doesn't read it!
Jules Verne's and H.G. Wells' work took different directions, reflecting two different generations and schools of thought. Verne's style emerged from the fantastic writing of the mid-nineteenth century, when exploration captured the imagination of the Western world. Well was a member of a generation struggling with an increasingly urban environment, huge advances in technology, and a massive restructuring of society.
New Vocabulary: Occidential; adjective; relating to the countries of the Occident
New Vocabulary: Monomania; exaggerated or obsessive enthusiasm for or preoccupation with one thing.
Year the narrator travels to is: 802,707 A.D.
Morlocks are under world, Eloi are above world
"I never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued. A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest."
"I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity - indeed there is no necessity - for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears."
"There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden."
"We improve them [our favorite plants and animals - and how free and few they are] gradually by selective breeding. ...gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. ... The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and cooperating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs."
"A sentiment is arising, and it will grow, against connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life."
"After the [conquest against nature] cones Quiet."
"Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness."
"I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless tap that ever a man devised."
"Men had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world were not the sole descendents of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages."
"I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such an experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke, even without enough matches."
"These Eloi were fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon - probably saw to the breeding of."
"She always seemed to me more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human."
"I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes - to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed."
"And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers ... to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man."
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