Now it is very right to rebuke our own race or religion for falling short of our own standards and ideals.
The Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better.
The Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride?
If Christianity should happen to be true – that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe – then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true.
The skeptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers and encyclopedias.
It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it.
Nobody has any business to use the word “progress” unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals.
He made a wild gesture as if to knock the old man’s hat off, called out something like “Catch me if you can,” and went racing away across the white, open Circus. Concealment was impossible now; and looking back over his shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin.
The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die.
They were content to follow Francis with their praises until they were stopped by their prejudices; the stubborn prejudices of the sceptic.
The obvious thing to say of his appearance was that he would have been extremely handsome if he had not been entirely bald. But, indeed, that would itself be a rather bald way of putting it. Fantastic as it sounds, it would fit the case better to say that people would have been surprised to see hair growing on him; as surprised as if they had found hair growing on the bust of a Roman emperor.
It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own.
For with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages.
The Eugenists’ books and articles are full of suggestions that non-eugenic unions should and may come to be regarded as we regard sins; that we should really feel that marrying an invalid is a kind of cruelty to children.
If our statesmen agree more in private, it is for the very simple reason that they agree more in public. And the reason they agree so much in both cases is really that they belong to one social class; and therefore the dining life is the real life. Tory and Liberal statesmen like each other, but it is not because they are both expansive; it is because they are both exclusive.
Cheerfulness without humour is a very trying thing.
The dawn of history reveals a humanity already civilized.
Frenchmen tend to be alike, because they are all soldiers; Prussians because they are all something else, probably policemen; even Americans are all something, though it is not easy to say what it is; it goes with hawk-like eyes and an irrational eagerness. Perhaps it is savages.
Our political vagueness divides men, it does not fuse them.
The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it;.