“A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.”

“There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.”

“The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.”

“We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.”

“The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.”

“It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress”

“The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth.”