Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.

What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another.

Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not repeat itself. ... Astronomy repeats itself; botany repeats itself; trigonometry repeats itself; mechanics repeats itself; compound long division repeats itself. Every sum if worked out in the same way at any time will bring out the same answer. ... A great many moderns say that history is a science; if so it occupies a solitary and splendid elevation among the sciences; it is the only science the conclusions of which are always wrong.

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.