The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.

To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.

I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...

Posting a letter and getting married [sic] are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic, a thing must be irrevocable

It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.

Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.