Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.