Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.

We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses.

Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.