How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first?

God made the world as an artist and that is why the world must learn from its artists.

When a bishop at the first shot abandons the worship of Christ and rallies his flock round the altar of Mars, he may be acting patriotically... but that does not justify him in pretending...that Christ is, in effect, Mars.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.

Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable.

Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.

What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?.