When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical...It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry...the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.

I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman...is a despot; the average man is a serf.

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.

There nearly always is a method in madness.