The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.

A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.