If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode.... an Englishman’s house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden which is literally different on every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud.

You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.