What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.
Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.
The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.
It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.
The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.
Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.
Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks.
All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them.
Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.
All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.
If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.
The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.
What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.
There are some desires that are not desirable.
Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else.
It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.
Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.