You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

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

If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

There is also an insulting speech about 'one grey day just like another'. You might as well talk about one green tree like another.

In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh.