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 t...
The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have dou...
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
The little sins are sometimes harder to confess than the big ones—but that's why it's so important to confess them.
The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, The Kingdom of heaven is within you. That text has been the stay and support of more Phar...
The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a tou...
She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.
Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles.
Nonsense!' said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox.
Moderation is not a compromise; moderation is a passion; the passion of great judges.
If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practica...
If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life t...
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom the...
I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.
I cannot betray you, but I might betray myself. Come, come! wait and see me betray myself. I shall do it so nicely.
Far be it from a poor friar to deny that you have these dazzling diamonds in your head, all designed in the most perfect mathematical shapes and shining with a purely celestial light; all there, almos...
You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal..The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have neve...
You don't expect me, he said, to revolutionize society on this lawn?Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.No, I don't, he said; but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarch...
We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares.