What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.
Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. (on not perfectionism to put things off) .
He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.
The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier.
Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles.
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.
I should say that psycho-analysis was confession without absolution.
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
That is the one eternal education: to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child.
America is the only country ever founded on a creed.
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
I've been to every park in every city and not seen a statue to a committee.
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.
Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.
Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth. Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.
Progress is the mother of all problems.
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