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
We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.
I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him.
It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.
Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.
[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode.... an Englishman’s house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden which is literally different on every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud.
For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.
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.
If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
We are all ordinary people. And it's the extraordinary people Who know it.
One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.
No man must be superior to the things that are common to men.... Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.
Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.
Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain
You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them.
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
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.
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
The wine they drink in Paradise They make in Haute Lorraine.
The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.
It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.
The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.
When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.
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