The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.

It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true.

Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.

The soul is dyed by the color of its leisure hours

We are distressed because our churches are half empty; and many of them would be emptier if the Gospel were preached in them

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict...

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

Civilization is being poisoned by its own waste products

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

We must cut our coat according to our cloth, and adapt ourselves to changing circumstances

There are two kinds of fools: one says, “This is old, therefore it is good”; the other says, “This is new, therefore it is better

The command “Be fruitful and multiply” was promulgated according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two persons

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

Many people believe that they are attracted by God or by nature, when they are only repelled by man.

Originality, I fear, is too often only undetected and frequently unconscious plagiarism

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.

The church is only a secular institution in which the half-educated speak to the half-converted

The vulgar mind always mistakes the exceptional for the important.

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.