You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

Science boasts of the distance of its stars; of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is "At Hand."

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.