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

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ... It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wilderness lies in wait.

But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.