"The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men."

"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."

"The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar."

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

"In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it."

"The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us."

"Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes."

"Marriage is an adventure, like going to war."

"All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change."

"The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing."

"The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it."

"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."

"Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know."

"The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations."

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

"White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white."

"The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them."

"It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam."

"Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised."

"There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect."

"The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life."

"One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star."

"If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God."

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

"Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle."

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."

"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."

"The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it."

"Half a truth is better than no politics."

"If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride."

"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

"There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read."

"When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."

"A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying."

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

"There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell."

"Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it."

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."

"Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are."

"Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged."

"No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete."

"A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation."

"We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour."

"Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young."

"Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs."

"All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks."

"When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility."

"The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself."