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Quotes from A Mirror for Observers — Edgar Pangborn

1909–1976 United States

← All quotes by Edgar Pangborn

24 quotes

I learned some years back that human nature is volatile stuff in a world full of lighted matches.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

If you’re interested in ethics, you could do worse than think in terms of geological time.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

I notice men themselves have never invented a god capable of understanding them.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

One would think that the mere shortness of life would be a reminder that to destroy beauty is to destroy one’s own self too.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

In politics, wishful thinking just gives the wolves a license to howl.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Human beings have never been very adult about cleaning up after themselves.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

One doesn’t look for the small promises of an ethical revolution in the headlines: the ocean’s currents do not derive from the ocean’s tempests.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

You never meet anything mean or cruel in music.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

In intelligent life, human or Martian, maybe there has always been a genuine division between those who honor the individuality of others and those who are driven to control and pervert it.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Haven’t you stopped to wonder why men want a scapegoat? What is it, what was it ever, but a device to help them avoid looking at themselves?

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Namir would know all the uses of scandal and innuendo and half-truths. Strange weapons, so easy to take up, the stain indelible on user and victim.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

They measure rank as Mussolini did, by the amount of carpet between door and desk.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Patience is a narcotic for the weak.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Maybe the schools have come to regard education as a sort of by-product, something it would be nice to have if it isn’t too much trouble.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

“I wonder,” said Abraham, “if I’d ever think I knew enough to act.”
“If you don’t, then study all your life and talk a little when you believe you have something to say.”

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

I’ve watched human beings fool around with love. Love of self mostly, but also love of place, work, ideas; love of friends, of male and female, parent and child. I can’t think of any human illusions more comic than those of love.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Never, beautiful Earth, never even at the height of the human storms have I forgotten you, my planet Earth, your forests and your fields, your oceans, the serenity of your mountains; the meadows, the continuing rivers, the incorruptible promise of returning spring.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

A justifiable expense, Drozma, if only to let Angelo discover the woods—at any rate I have been in most of the temples and cathedrals of the world, and the peace I sometimes found in them was never more than a small substitute for what there is under the arches of the leaves.

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

“And where is your guarantee against war in that, Miles?”
“There can’t be any except in human ethical maturity. A sensible political structure would help enormously, but there’s going to be risk of war so long as men think they can justify hating strangers and grabbing for power. Human hearts and minds are basic—the rest is mechanics.”

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

“Faith,” she said gently. “But, Will darling, I just never have seen any of the mountains they say it moved.”

A Mirror for Observers (1954)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edgar Pangborn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.