The moderns do not realize modernity.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally.

There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis.