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.

Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.

What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business.

It is the first law of practical courage. To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.

So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.

somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die.