The most sacred thing is to be able to shut your own door.
The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of...
The dreadful joy Thy Son has sentIs heavier than any care;
Vers libre, (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.
There again, said Syme irritably, what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious m...
...It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even so, thought only destroys because it broadens. A man's brain is a bomb," he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking his...
One would think it would be most unwise in a man to be afraid of a skeleton, since Nature has set curious and quite insuperable obstacles to his running away from it.
When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommo...
We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen,...
The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorio...
And an even stronger example of Mr. Wells's indifference to the human psychology can be found in his cosmopolitanism, the abolition in his Utopia of all patriotic boundaries. He says in his innocent w...
There was something that He hid from all men, when he went up a mountain to pray. There was something that he covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that...
I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.
If we are calm, replied the policeman, it is the calm of organized resistance.Eh? said Syme, staring.The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle, pursued the policeman. The composure of an arm...
In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious pu...
The word 'heresy' not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word 'orthodoxy' not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wr...
The present importance of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of ancient books. We may almost say of the Book of Job that it is the most inter...
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
Our friend Tuesday, said the President in a deep voice at once of quietude and volume, our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp the idea. He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a...
What we all dread most is a maze with no centre.