There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

Theology is only thought applied to religion.

It is only great men who take up a great space by not being there.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.

A faith is that which is able to survive a mood.

Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription.