“What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.”
“Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.”
“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.”
“Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.”
“All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.”
“The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.”
“Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.”
“Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.”
“In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.”
“Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
“There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”
“The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.”
“The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.”
“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”
“True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.”
“''My country, right or wrong'' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ''My mother, drunk or sober.''”
“Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf ;is better than a whole loaf.”
“The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.”
“A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.”
“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”
“Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.”
“Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.”
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
“We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.”
“Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it -- or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.”
“A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.”
“Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.”
“The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.”
“If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists.”