The secret of life lies in laughter and humility.
No man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.
A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of a novel. But if he had control over everything, there would be so much hero that there would be no novel.
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm because they are afraid to look back.
Always be comic in a tragedy.
There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.
We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not understand. So long as we find the character easy to read, we are reading into it our own character.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But... if you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed.
Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.
You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.
Life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege.
A man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it.
Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice.
The family is the theater of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.
The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
Progress is obviously the antithesis of independent thinking.
Liberalism has been degraded into liberality.
Passion makes every detail important.
