The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.
But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.