Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he for the first time has begun to live.

When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.