A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

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.

She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.