A nation that has nothing but its amusements will not be amused for long.

All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

This is, first and last, the real value of Christmas; in so far as the mythology remains at all it is a kind of happy mythology. Personally, of course, I believe in Santa Claus; but it is the season of forgiveness, and I will forgive others for not doing so.

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.