Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.
But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.
Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass.
Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
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.
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.
What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.
There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree like another.
Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story.
The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous.
Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.
I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.
Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.
When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.
Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.
There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.
The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.
Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.
But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.
All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.
The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.
The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.
Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.
People decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad.
If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.
[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.
It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.
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.
I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right
For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, the sense of doom in the Calvinist.
He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.
The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.
An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.
For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value of any of them is that they bear the image of the king.
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.
I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.
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.
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.