The only defensible war is a war of defense.

Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite.

Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Men lived among mighty mountains and eternal forests for ages before they realized that they were poetical; it may reasonably be inferred that some of our descendants may see the chimney-pots as rich a purple as the mountain-peaks, and find the lamp-posts as old and natural as the trees.

And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.

I have called this book What Is Wrong with the World? and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.