Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.

An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.

the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring - or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps - lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.