Quotes from book
Sirius

Olaf Stapledon

Sirius is a 1944 science fiction novel by the British philosopher and author Olaf Stapledon, whose title character is a dog named Sirius with humanlike intelligence. A sense of existential questioning suffuses the book, as the author delves into aspects of Sirius's psyche. The novel deals with many human issues through Sirius and his experiences, his unusual nature, his ideas and his relationships with humans. The characters go to great lengths to prevent Sirius from becoming a circus-type wonderdog, and instead, they seek to develop Sirius's character much like a family would create and foster that of a human child.

“I see, indeed I know, that in some sense God is love, and God is wisdom, and God is creative action, yes and God is beauty; but what God actually is, whether the maker of all things, or the fragrance of all things, or just a dream in our own hearts, I have not the art to know. Neither have you, I believe; nor any man, nor any spirit of our humble stature.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Sirius (1944)

“I, at any rate, acknowledge only one master, not forty-five million two-legged sheep, or two thousand million, but simply and absolutely the spirit.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter XII Farmer Sirius (an answer to Plaxy's rant about democracy).

“She said, "We are bound to hurt one another so much, again and again. We are so terribly different." "Yes," he said, "But the more different, the more lovely the loving."”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter IV Youth (a conversation between Sirius and Plaxy).

“Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Sirius (1944)

“Of course I don't want the old religious dope. But I don't want just the new science dope either. I want the truth.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter VI Birth-pangs of a Personality

“[S]o far as music ever had a "meaning" beyond the immediate and exquisite value of the sound-pattern itself, its "meaning" must be simply an emotional attitude. It could never speak directly about the objective world, or "the nature of existence"; but it might create a complex emotional attitude which might be appropriate to some feature of the objective world, or to the universe as a whole.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter IX Sirius and Religion.

“In man, social intercourse has centred mainly on the process of absorbing fluid into the organism, but in the domestic dog and to a lesser extent among all wild canine species, the act charged with most social significance is the excretion of fluid.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter VIII Sirius at Cambridge (a passage supposedly written by Sirius)

“Nothing but man was really cruel, vindictive, except perhaps the loathly cat.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Source: Sirius (1944), Chapter VIII Sirius at Cambridge.

“Sunsets in pictures are so tiresome, but only boors and half-wits are not stirred by real sunsets.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Sirius (1944)

“I paced up and down the little room, a queer thing happened. It was as though my wandering imagination came upon a new quality, different from all that I had ever known; yet one which was also more familiar and intimate than the smell of Plaxy in the mood of love, more piercing sweet than bitches, more hunt-worthy than the trail of a fox.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Sirius (1944)

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