Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

A good civilisation spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilisation stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella-artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.

There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.

None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.

It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

I do not believe that any human being is fundamentally happier for being finally lost in a crowd, even if it is called a crowd of comrades.

They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.