Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.
The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.
There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.
It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.
At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.
There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.
History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced.
In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?
The center of every man’s existence is a dream.
Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.
At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.
Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.
There are a good many fools who call me a friend, and also a good many friends who call me a fool.
We must be fond of the world, even in order to change it.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it’s something you ought to do yourself.
There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.
The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.