Theology is only thought applied to religion.

Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home.

And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.

It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small... We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel...

Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.