A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it.
The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery.
Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.
Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.
If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.
They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words – ‘free-love’ – as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.
A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been a boy.
The Mass is not only about God becoming man, it is about Man becoming more himself.
Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes.
Adventure is the champagne of life, but I prefer my champagne and my adventures dry.
For the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
When you with velvets mantled o’er, Defy December’s tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.
Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters.
I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.
Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
He who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men.
Marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw.
It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.
The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.