Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.

Very few people in the world would care to listen to the real defense of their own characters. The real defense, the defense which belongs to the Day of Judgment, would make such damaging admissions, would clear away so many artificial virtues, would tell such tragedies of weakness and failure, that a man would sooner be misunderstood and censured by the world than exposed to that awful and merciless eulogy.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. . . .

Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.

Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.