The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood.

advertisement ... has brought our disregard for truth into the open without even a figleaf to cover it.

Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.

Manners are like zero in arithmetic. They may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal of value to everything else.

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.

It is better to be passionate than to be tolerant at the expense of one's soul.

All our acts have sacramental possibilities.