“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.”

“Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the societybegins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless. We might almost say that in a society without such good things we should hardly have any test by which to register a decline; that is why some of the static commercial oligarchies like Carthage have rather an air in history of standing and staring like mummies, so dried up and swathed and embalmed that no man knows when they are new or old.”

“Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be declined.”

“They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.”

“Eugenics, as discussed, evidently means the control of some menover the marriage and unmarriage of others; and probably means thecontrol of the few over the marriage and unmarriage of the many”

“No man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid...who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless - like a tree? Fight the thing that you fear.”

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