Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Books wind into the heart.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.