Top 24 Quotes & Sayings by Nevil Shute

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British novelist Nevil Shute.

Last updated on December 25, 2024.

Nevil Shute Norway was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or from fellow engineers that he was '"not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.

British - Novelist | January 17, 1899 - January 12, 1960

Source: Wikipedia

When I was first sent from H.M.S. King Alfred to be interviewed by Goodeve in the Admiralty, I was furious. The War seemed to me, in June of 1940, to be desperately serious, and England in imminent peril of invasion.

Nevil Shute

Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute or reckless. One crash in a thousand may be unavoidable because God wills it so - not more than that.

Nevil Shute

Everybody pays lip service to the safety of the aeroplane, but nobody is prepared to pay for it.

Nevil Shute

After two wars, I have been in danger too often to bother very much about being killed, and when it comes, I would prefer that it should happen in an aeroplane, since aeroplanes have been the best part of my life.

Nevil Shute

It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.

Nevil Shute

Remember that the Clerget lands very fast, at over forty miles an hour, and with that great engine in the nose the tail was light. Watch it... Lovely.

Nevil Shute

Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.

Nevil Shute

I never was in such a horrid office . . . It's not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it?

Nevil Shute

You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for falling in love.

Nevil Shute

If what they say is right we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.

Nevil Shute

I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.

Nevil Shute

You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.

Nevil Shute

Without work men are utterly undone

Nevil Shute

To put your life in danger from time to time... breeds a saneness in dealing with day-to-day trivialities.

Nevil Shute

Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you're going to lose before you start. It's fun just playing them.

Nevil Shute

The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work.

Nevil Shute

She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done." "That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it.

Nevil Shute

If I have learned one thing in my 54 years, it is that it is very good for the character to engage in sports which put your life in danger from time to time. It breeds a saneness in dealing with day to day trivialities which probably cannot be got in any other way, and a habit of quick decisions.

Nevil Shute

It has been said that an engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound; if that be so, we were certainly engineers.

Nevil Shute

It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.

Nevil Shute