A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.

If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.

At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.

The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.