“The Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.”

“Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.”

“One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.”

“We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.”

“Who are you?' he asked suddenly.I'm not sure,' replied the other. 'I rather think I am your long-lost brother.'But I haven't got a brother,' objected Tommy.It only shows how very long-lost I was,' replied his remarkable relative. 'But I assure you that, before they managed to long-loose me, I used to live in this house myself.”

“The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.”

“This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government ... is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum,..., being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. .... In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed. ”