It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

Not only in sex, but in all things men have moved blindly, have evolved out of slime to dissolve into it when this accident of consequences is over.

But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

In time, Mr Hall, one gets to recognize that sneer, that hardness, for fornication extends far beyond the actual deed. Were it a deed only, I for one would not hold it anathema. But when the nations went a whoring they invariably ended by denying God, I think, and until all sexual irregularities and not some of them are penal the Church will never reconquer England.

Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.