The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.

Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.

It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.

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.

It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

It is the first law of practical courage. To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.