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

Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.