“The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.” 

“It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.”

“There are some desires that are not desirable.” 

“The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.”

“Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.”

“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.”

“There’d be a lot less scandal if people didn’t idealize sin and pose as sinners.” 

“Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.” 

“The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.” 

“There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth.”

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” 

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it. 

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. 

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.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

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.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

“We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the ‘lower classes’ when we mean humanity minus ourselves.”