Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, ''Keep tomorrow dark,'' and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) ''Cheat the Prophet.'' The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, but that the dead are living.
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.
Truths turn into dogmas the minute they are disputed.
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
No man knows he is young while he is young.