The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.

The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?

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