The moment we care for anything deeply, the world – that is, all the other miscellaneous interests – becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one’s self “unspotted from the world;”...

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

I am sure that it was only because Michael Angelo was engaged in the ancient and honourable occupation of lying in bed that he ever realised how the roof of the Sistine Chapel might be...

The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch...

Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will...

The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance...

Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar...

It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree.

It may be said of Socialism, therefore, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty….The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious...

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two...

Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The moon was so strong and full, that (by a paradox often...

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more...

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.

Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is...

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...

We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world.

The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he...

If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it...

The supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born … by the act of being born, we step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its...

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.

It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money.

it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the...

Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery that her thrifty dressmaking went with a considerable feminine care for...

The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the...

The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue.

The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.

Whatever we may think of the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree that it should be done...

And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run...

The huge modern heresy is to alter the human soul to fit modern social conditions, instead of altering modern social conditions to fit the human soul.

If the characters are not wicked, the book is.” We must tell stories the way God does, stories in which a sister must float her little brother on a river with nothing but a basket...

A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.

While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as...

The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

The word ‘heresy’ not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word ‘orthodoxy’ not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.

Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.

A real problem only occurs when there are admittedly disadvantages in all courses that can be pursued. If it is discovered just before a fashionable wedding that the Bishop is locked up in the coal-cellar,...

He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.

Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely...

If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need...

Apart from such chaotic classics as these, my own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for...

I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

Satan fell by the force of gravity.

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end...

All that is mererationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnanceand terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels butdenies there can be devils. The superstition is in the person whoadmits there...

Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its...

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.