H. G. Wells Quotes

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the room had leaped into light.

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.

When the mind is exhausted in trying to find the answer, the answer dawns.

As I'm writing, certain things become clear to me and certain things begin to feel right and make sense. The pieces start to fall into place.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.

Writing, for me, is the great organiser. It's while writing that I think most deeply about things.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.

I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen.

One's intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

Enlightenments, like accidents, happen only to prepared minds.

Often when works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, long or short, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind.

Stop resisting your problems so furiously in your mind. Stop struggling to solve them. If you do that, a great sense of peace followed by a great sense of power will come to you.

You have moments of clarity, things become clear to you that you didn't understand before. But there's never any making ends meet or finding any time of longstanding peace of mind about something.

You've been thinking about something without willing to for a long time...Then, all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash and you suddenly see the answer.

It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. Thought cannot have an insight.

Wit is the lightning of the mind, reason the sunshine, and reflection the moonlight.

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

Everything comes to me while I'm sitting on the pot.

We sometimes have a flash of understanding that amounts to the insight of genius, and yet it slowly withers, even in our hands - like a flower. The form remains, but the colours and the fragrance are gone.