If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue.

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

A third-class carriage is a community, while a first-class carriage is a place of wild hermits.

Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.