The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.

The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.

The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking.