Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel.

Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities.

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.

The great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.