# Quote — H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

> There is a kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it, for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it, but I believe he half likes some of those beasts. It's his business, not mine. They only sicken me with a sense of failure. I take no interest in them. I fancy they follow in the lines the Kanaka missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery of a rational life, poor beasts! There's something they call the Law. Sing hymns about ‘all thine.’ They build themselves their dens, gather fruit, and pull herbs — marry even. But I can see through it all, see into their very souls, and see there nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish, anger and the lusts to live and gratify themselves. — Yet they're odd; complex, like everything else alive. There is a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me.

- Author: [H.G. Wells](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells.md)
- Book: [The Island of Doctor Moreau](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-island-of-doctor-moreau.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._G._Wells#The_Island_of_Doctor_Moreau_(1896)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-island-of-doctor-moreau/there-is-a-kind

## More from this book

> "This silly ass of a world," he said; "what a muddle it all is! I haven't had any life. I wonder when it's going to begin. Sixteen years being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at their own sweet will; five in London grinding hard at medicine, bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder — I didn't know any better — and hustled off to this beastly island. Ten years here! What's it all for, Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by a baby?"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-island-of-doctor-moreau/this-silly-ass.md)

> I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring, and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast pitiless Mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence; and I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions, were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-island-of-doctor-moreau/i-fell-indeed.md)

> An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-island-of-doctor-moreau/an-animal-may.md)