“Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.”

“But if he has lost the sane vision, he can only get it back by something very like a mad vision; that is, by seeing a man as a strange animal and realising how strange an animal he is.”

“He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.”

“If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.”

“Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.”

“The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: thatpeople do not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it mayor may not be right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivablybe right to kill a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man.”

“of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.”