La mejor prueba de la cultura y la liberalidad de un hombre es su actitud ante las cosas que nunca sucedieron.

Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.

And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads.

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

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

Coincidence is a spiritual pun.

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.