The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.

Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

No sane person, I hope, would accuse me of saying that every Distributist must drink beer; especially if he could brew his own cider or found claret better for his health. But I do most emphatically scorn and scout the vulgar refinement that regards beer as something unseemly and humiliating. And I would shout the name of beer a hundred times a day, to shock all the snobs who have so shameful a sense of shame.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.