The Wearisome Machine

Just finished reading an interesting short story ("The Machine Stops...") written by E.M. Forster in 1909.     Some of what he describes is uncomfortably close to reality today.    Here is a link to the full text, and below are some quotes I thought were particularly good:

"Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the Machine may progress [...]"

~ · ~ 

"I want to see you not through the Machine," said Kuno. "I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine."

~ · ~ 

"[S]he did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears." 

~ · ~ 

"[She] was seized with the terrors of direct experience." 

~ · ~ 

"What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul."

~ · ~ 

"Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress." 

~ · ~ 

"[B]ehind all the uproar was silence - the silence which is the voice of the earth and of the generations who have gone."