I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.

The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.

There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.

Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity.