"There is many a flower which would not be growing if the dung had not happened to fall where it did."

John Wyndham Literature See all quotes by John Wyndham →

React to this quote

More by John Wyndham

“I don't understand women. Nobody does. Least of all themselves.”

“'The wise lamb does not enrage the lion,' he said. 'It placates him, plays for time, and hopes for the best.'”

“'We've got it all there in the books if we take the trouble to find out about it.'”

“'In spite of what they say, two can't live as cheap as one. And wives hanker after certain standards, and ought to have them - within reason, of course.'”

“It takes civilised people quite a while to appreciate 'the big lie' technique.”

“Darling, you're talking as if all normal-length lives were planned. They aren't, you know. People have to learn how to live them—and by the time they find out, they're nearly gone. No time to remedy mistakes.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Were an impartial and competent observer of the state of society in these middle colonies asked, whence it happens that Virginia and Maryland are still so exceedingly behind most of the other British …"

— Jonathan Boucher

1738–1804

#art

"Our sense of touch is a fundamental sensibility which comes into action at birth – our stereognostic sense – the ability to feel weight and form and assess its significance. The form which have had sp…"

— Barbara Hepworth

Art1903–1975

#family

"No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to e…"

— Leo Strauss

Philosophy1899–1973

#change

"The simple fact is that nothing would be more harmful to the post-war economic and social welfare of our country than that the Tory Party should again have charge of the nation's affairs. The Tory rec…"

— Clement Attlee

Politics1883–1967

#freedom