I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.

To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.