We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.

Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.