[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die.

To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.