I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.

We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

Any one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.

Humour is meant, in a literal sense, to make game of man; that is, to dethrone him from his official dignity and hunt him like game.

A mystic is a man who separates heaven and earth even if he enjoys them both.