Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was.

If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.

To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.

It is often a mistake to combine two pleasures, because pleasures, like pains, can act as counter-irri-tants to each other.

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?