The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important (such as sex, death, and religion), you must have mirth or you will have madness.

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it - because it is a fact.