“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild' is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.”

“I find it easy to forgive the man who invented a devilish instrument like dynamite, but how can one ever forgive the diabolical mind that invented the Nobel Prize in Literature?”

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

“The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity. ”

“The world shown us in books, whether the books be confessed epics or professed gospels, or in codes, or in political orations, or in philosophic systems, is not the main world at all: it is only the self-consciousness of certain abnormal people who have the specific artistic talent and temperament. A serious matter this for you and me, because the man whose consciousness does not correspond to that of the majority is a madman; and the old habit of worshipping madmen is giving way to the new habit of locking them up. And since what we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the absolete fictitious for the contemporary real, education, as you no doubt observed at Oxford, destroys, by supplantation, every mind that is not strong enough to see through the imposture and to use the great Masters of Arts as what they really are and no more: that is, patentees of highly questionable methods of thinking, and manufacturers of highly questionable, and for the majority but half valid representations of life. The school boy who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow's head makes perhaps the safest and most rational use of him; and I observe with reassurance that you occasionally do the same, in your prime, with your Aristotle.”

“THE QUESTION seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resoluteadherence to the old cry of “Not this man, but Barabbas.”Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, inspite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, hismillions of money, and his moralities and churches and politicalconstitutions. “This man” has not been a failure yet;for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But hehas had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his nameand taken his cross as a standard. There is a sort of complimentin that. There is even a sort of loyalty in it, like that ofthe brigand who breaks every law and yet claims to be apatriotic subject of the king who makes them. We have alwayshad a curious feeling that though we crucified Christon a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right endof it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan.There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster,which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious thanthe one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part ofAnnas went home and died of horror. But responsible peoplehave never made such attempts. The moneyed, respectable,capable world has been steadily anti-Christian andBarabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific doctrineof Jesus has not in all that time been put into political orgeneral social practice.”

“When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.”