“If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.”
“Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.”
“The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.”
“A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
“Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.”
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
“Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.”
“Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.”
“Journalism consists largely in saying ''Lord James is dead'' to people who never knew Lord James was alive.”
“The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”
“But there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.”
“If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.”
“People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.”
“Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.”
“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”
“We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.”
“But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.”
“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.”
“When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.”
“There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.”
“The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.”
“Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.”
“Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.”
“Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.”
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”
“The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.”
“You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”