Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.

In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing -a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.