Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas.
Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable one. The trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.
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.
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon who is wasting fairyland.
I do not believe that any human being is fundamentally happier for being finally lost in a crowd, even if it is called a crowd of comrades.
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.
A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.
You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.
There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong... A stiff apology is a second insult.
Nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex (female) superiority that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father.
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.
What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.
When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.
Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.
The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.
If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.
Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning.
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.
Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?
Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil.
What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.
Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work.
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.
There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.
A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve.
The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.
People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.
If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.
'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.
I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.