In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential and godliness is regarded as an offence.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.

To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be modest is the next best thing. I am not so sure about being quiet.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?

Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.