Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions th...
This clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.
Chattering finch and water-flyAre not merrier than I;Here among the flowers I lieLaughing everlastingly.No: I may not tell the best;Surely, friends, I might have guessed
An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong.
There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.
Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to bre...
The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so...
Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since...
Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity.
The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.
There is no harm in our criticizing foreigners, if only we would also criticize ourselves. In other words, the world might need even less of its new charity, if it had a little more of the old humilit...
Listen to me, cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks b...
It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by the simplest of all tests. No ruler would deliberately dress up in the recognized fetters of a slave...
A Second Childhood.When all my days are endingAnd I have no song to sing,I think that I shall not be too oldTo stare at everything;As I stared once at a nursery doorOr a tall tree and a swing.Wherein...
We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he can...
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 v...
All habits are bad habits. (...) Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming f...
Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.
Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak.