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

Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness.

Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.