The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.
For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value of any of them is that they bear the image of the king.
When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.
It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.
If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.
The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.
It’s not the world that’s got so much worse but the news coverage that’s got so much better.
Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.
It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.
Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.
Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.
A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.
The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star.
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe.
A faith is that which is able to survive a mood.
CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.
A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.