“A great curse has fallen upon modern life with the discovery of the vastness of the word Education.”
– “A Grammar of Shelley,” A Handful of Authors
“A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.”
– “The Moral Philosophy of Meredith,” A Handful of Authors
“Moderns have not the moral courage, as a rule, to avow the sincere spiritual bias behind their fads; they become insincere even about their sincerity. Most modern liberality consists of finding irreligious excuses for religious bigotry. The earlier type of bigot pretended to be more religious than he really was. The later type pretends to be less religious than he really is. He does not wear a mask of piety, but rather a mask of impiety – or, at any rate, of indifference.”
– Illustrated London News, Dec. 27, 1919
“A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind.”
– William Blake
“The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.”
– Roman Converts, Dublin Review, Jan-Mar. 1925
“I might inform those humanitarians who have a nightmare of new and needless babies (for some humanitarians have that sort of horror of humanity) that if the recent decline in the birth-rate were continued for a certain time, it might end in there being no babies at all; which would console them very much.”
– Illustrated London News, May 24, 1930
“We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the ‘lower classes’ when we mean humanity minus ourselves.”
– “A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls,” The Defendant