We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.

Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods.

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether.