A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.