All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos.

War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.