And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds.

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

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!

There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.