ThursdayAug 27, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord Jones died' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget. For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong.
John Grubby, who was short and stout And troubled with religious doubt, Refused about the age of three To sit upon the curate's knee.
I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals...
Journalism consists largely in saying Lord Jones died to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it Again on something solid.
Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses it.
The chief object of education is not to learn things But to unlearn things.
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it.
The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
We make our friends; we make our enemies; But God makes our next-door neighbor.
When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.
No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkeness or so good as drink.
Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
Human anger is a higher thing than what is called divine discontent. For you must be angry with something; but you cannot be discontented with everything.
The thing I hate about an argument is it always interrupts a discussion.
Art is limitation: the essence of every picture is the frame.
Art, like morality, consists in drawing a line somewhere.
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. There is no big man who has not felt small. Some men never feel small; but these are the few men who are.
A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that its never been tried ... not that it cant remake the world, but that its difficult.
A good civilization spreads over us like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform.
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
Courage is the strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city.
The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I would call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
When people begin to ignore human dignity, it will not be long before they begin to ignore human rights.
Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is always dishonest.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.
A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, 'charm', 'spell', 'enchantment'. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.
If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
To have a right to do a thing is not the same as to be right in doing it.
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
There is more simplicity in a man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grapenuts in principle.
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
We say, not lightly but very literally, that the truth has made us free. They say that it makes us so free that it cannot be the truth. To them it is like believing in fairyland to believe in such freedom as we enjoy. It is like believing in men with wing
If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it because it is a fact.
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.
True contentment is a real, even an active, virtue not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it.
Without education, we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Feminists are those who cannot stand female characteristics.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
A yawn is a silent shout.
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