Men rush toward complexity; but yearn for simplicity.

Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.

Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.

The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.

According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.

The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark.

To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance.