There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.

Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.

There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.