We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense.

War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.

Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.

Monarchy can easily be "debunked," but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

Nothing in Man is either worse or better for being shared with the beasts.

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.