Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.
In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel.
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.
The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.
A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.
Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.
It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.
Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.
Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.
But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed something – war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.
Half a truth is better than no politics.
People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.
A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.