It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.