The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists.

Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.

Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.