Patriotism has served, at different times, as widely different ends as a razor, which ought to be used in keeping your face clean and yet may be used to cut your own throat or that of an innocent person.
Charles Edward MontagueA lot of our fellow liberals ... seem to me rather to doom themselves to futility in public affairs because the won't recognize that there's a zone of natural affection midway between the inner, or family one, and the outer, or all-humanity one. I suppose they are somehow short of a zone themselves and they seem to get vexed... The common man knows better, just as he'd know better if some philosopher told him he ought not to make invidious distinctions by feeding his own children in preference to others. But of course he can't explain; he just ... goes on feeding the kids.
Charles Edward MontagueTo be amused by what you read - that is the great spring of happy quotations.
Charles Edward MontagueBurgundy was the winiest wine, the central, essential, and typical wine, the soul and greatest common measure of all the kindly wines of the earth.
Charles Edward MontagueTake delight in a thing, or rather in anything, not as a means to some other end, but just because it is what it is. A child in the full health of his mind will put his hand flat on the summer lawn, feel it, and give a little shiver of private glee at the elastic firmness of the globe.
Charles Edward Montague