Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas.

[Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster. ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws in this life by belief in another.

One should, I think, always give children money, for they will spend it for themselves far more profitably than we can ever spend it for them.