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Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.
[ Prejudice ]
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That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
[ Equality ]
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There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.
[ Talent ]
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Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
[ Individuality ]
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It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.
[ Fiction ]
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Most ignorance is evincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
[ Ignorance ]
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A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.
[ Ignorance ]
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But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed -- a compass, not a weathercock.
[ Religion ]
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Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.
[ Silence ]
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Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored.
[ Facts ]
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Facts are ventriloquists dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
[ Facts ]
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The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.
[ Nations ]
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You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
[ Religion ]
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Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof -- that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.
[ Spirituality ]
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The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
[ Solitude ]
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What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes --ah, they have all the necessary leisure.
[ Heroes ]
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Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
[ Pleasure ]
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A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.
[ Cities ]
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The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful --because the reproached self isn't abandoned; it remains intact.
[ Forgiveness ]
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