For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.
There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants.
All government is an ugly necessity.
It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.
With all that we hear of American hustle and hurry, it is rather strange that Americans seem to like to linger on longer words.
It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.
I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is.
Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.
By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.
The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.
Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.
The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.
A good man’s work is effected by doing what he does, a woman’s by being what she is.
Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.
One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created.
Theology is only thought applied to religion.
Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.