The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man, and is always talking about what he may do.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

It is the decisive people who have become civilised; it is the indecisive, otherwise called the higher sceptics, or the idealistic doubters, who have remained barbarians.

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.

Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.

There are two kinds of peacemakers in the modern world; and they are both, though in various ways, a nuisance. The first peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that he agrees with everybody. He confuses everybody. The second peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that everybody agrees with him. He enrages everybody. Between the two of them they produce a hundred times more disputes and distractions than we poor pugnacious people would ever have thought of in our lives.