A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.

There is no reason whatever to believe that the order of nature has any greater bias in favour of man than it had in favour of the ichthyosaur or the pterodactyl.

Bah! The thing is not a nose at all, but a bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my face.

New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises 'Why then are you not taking part in them?

I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd.

Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture.