When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.

A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.

In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.

He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe.