Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it’s a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.
For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.
Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.
If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.
That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face – that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.
Passion makes every detail important.
Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.
The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact.
I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.
A child’s instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting. The child’s hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression.
Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified stature, of much more than heroic size.
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.
The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.
I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.