When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.
The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal.
It is to be feared that about a hundred detective stories have begun with the discovery that an American millionaire has been murdered; an event which is, for some reason, treated as a sort of calamity.
The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are omnipotent.
In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation – it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise 1 in the primer of minor poetry.
Different first principles make debate impossible.
Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told.
We’re all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something.
For with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions when only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride, secondly tears, and third laughter.
Whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England.
The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.
It is one thing to believe in witches, and quite another to believe in witch-smellers.
In most commercial ways we’re a pretty forward country. In these moral ways we’re content to be a pretty backward country.
To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they “talk for effect”; and then the writers answer: “What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness?
Moderation is not a compromise; moderation is a passion; the passion of great judges.
Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.
Of course sane people always thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the glory of God or according to the plan of Nature;.
Where does a wise man hide a pebble?” And the tall man answered in a low voice: “On the beach.” The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: “Where does a wise man hide a leaf?” And the other answered: “In the forest.
We ought not give ourselves the benefit of the doubt if we plan on doubting everything else.
The old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. Believe me, the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic.