What the Church should be telling him [the carpenter] is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

What is the use of acquiring one's heart's desire if one cannot handle and gloat over it, show it to one's friends, and gather an anthology of envy and admiration?

To know one's own limitations is the hallmark of competence.

The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists.

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.

I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.

She couldn't have found anything nastier to say if she had thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.