A sober man may become a drunkard through being a coward. A brave man may become a coward through being a drunkard.

The woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn’t obeyed.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‘Give me death’-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions.

The fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunset, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; they can breed thoughts.