The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.

Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour.

The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

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.

It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.