What wonder, then, if human beings in their search for the divine have generally preferred to look within!
The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.
The ductless glands secrete among other things our moods, our aspirations, our philosophy of life.
After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one’s mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First-class proteins for the body, fourth-class love-stories for the spirit.
An ideal is merely the projection, on an enormously enlarged scale, of some aspect of personality.
Indifference to all the refinements of life – it’s really shocking. Just Calvinism, that’s all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin’s theology.
Henri IV’s feet and armpits enjoyed an international reputation.
Thought is barred in this City of Dreadful Joy and conversation is unknown.
In a few years, no doubt, marriage licences will be sold like dog licences, good for 12 months.
The artists who the world has always recognized as the greatest are those with the widest sympathy. The greatness of the great artist depends precisely on the width and the intensity of his sympathy.
The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.
Pageantry is a visionary art which has been used, from time immemorial, as a political instrument.
Reality, no matter how utopian, seems to be something people need to frequently take a holiday from.
Drinking can not be sacramentalised except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos or the Celtic god of beer was a loud and disorderly affair.
Dying is almost the least spiritual of our acts, more strictly carnal even than the act of love. There are Death Agonies that are like the strainings of the Costive at stool.
The silent bear no witness against themselves.
In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.
At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.
Teaching is the last refuge of feeble minds with a classical education.