If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.

As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.

The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.

Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.

Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.