For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.

Indeed the Book of Job avowedly only answers mystery with mystery. Job is comforted with riddles; but he is comforted. Herein is indeed a type, in the sense of a prophecy, of things speaking with authority. For when he who doubts can only say, ‘I do not understand,’ it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat ‘You do not understand.’ And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding.

It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.

One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger; growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.

I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.

How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.