I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.
It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.
If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.
Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.
Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.
I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.
The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.
I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.
The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.