Thus the Sacrament of Penance gives a new life, and reconciles a man to all living, but it does not do it as the optimists and the hedonists and the heathen preachers of happiness do it. The gift is given at a price, and is conditioned by a confession. In other words, the name of the price is Truth, which may also be called Reality; but it is facing the reality about oneself. When the process is only applied to other people, it is called Realism.

-Autobiography (1936)

Imperialism is not an insanity of patriotism; it is merely an illusion of cosmopolitanism.

-Irish Impressions (1919)

"...they are not submitting a variety of actions to one test; they are applying a variety of tests to one action,"

People will make attempts at despotism, or demands for freedom, successively or even simultaneously, according to a quite arbitrary program of opportunism. And we feel that they are not submitting a variety of actions to one test; they are applying a variety of tests to one action, which is for them already a fixed and settled action. They do what they want, and make up reasons for it afterwards; but even the reasons are rather too cunning to be reasonable. In a word, it is this chaos, in the creed and code of conduct, that prevents a man from finding in it any sort of guide, even a guide to progress.

-All I Survey (1933)

A friend has sent me a sort of guide or prospectus of the food eaten by vegetarians, or, to speak more strictly, I believe, by fruitarians. It has given me more solid pleasure than any book of poetry or philosophy I have read for years. Not that I want to eat the fruitarian foods; Heaven forbid. A man may be interested in the ingenuity and picturesqueness of a scheme of advertisement without having the desperate design of sampling any of the wares. Suppose I had lived in Renaissance Italy, I might have received some pleasant little pamphlet such as this, advertising "Borgia Biscuits; the best for Bishops"; or, "Try Lucrezia, the Latest Soporific; Invariably Ends an Illness"; or, "Pope Alexander's Painless Chianti: the late Cardinal Colonna writes 'Since then I have used no other.' "

In such a case I should order tones of the entertaining prospectus, but none of the food. I feel almost an equal degree of fastidiousness about the Fruit Foods, some of which sound to me as ominous as Borgia Biscuits.

-December 4, 1909, Illustrated London News

Heathenism held the individual as a mere muscle of the State; scepticism is restoring the conception. Therefore the modern sociologists are already beginning to dabble in that dreadful idea of which the old pagans drank deep. I mean Infanticide. Christianity stands in history between them, demanding justice though the heavens fall; and he that is not with her is against her.

-April 9, 1910, Daily News

No one worth calling a man allows his moods to change his convictions; but it is by moods that we understand other men’s convictions. The bigot is not he who knows he is right; every sane man knows he is right. The bigot is he whose emotions and imagination are too cold and weak to feel how it is that other men go wrong.

-Alarms and Discursions (1910)

When we really wish to know how the world is going, it is no bad test to take some tag or current phrase of the press and reverse it, substituting the precise contrary, and see whether it makes more sense that way. It generally does; such a mass of outworn conventions has our daily commentary become.

-The Well and the Shallows (1935)

But when we are quite sure that we rejoice in a nation's strength, then and not before we are justified in judging its weakness.

-What I Saw in America (1922)

If there exist plausible reasons for supposing that an innovation is an improvement, then, of course, it is a valid argument to say that many real improvements have been denounced as mere innovations. If I think a man honest, and it is answered that he has been in prison, then it is rational for me to reply that St. Paul or Cervantes was in prison. But it is not rational of me to say that all the people in prison must be like Cervantes or St. Paul. There must be a prima facie case for the new thing; otherwise it is obvious that nothing is being asked of it but newness.

-December 23, 1911, Illustrated London News

It is utterly useless to talk about enlarging one's mind with visions of the future. The future does not enlarge one's mind in the least. The future is a blank wall on which I paint my own portrait as large as I like... We are attracted to the future because it is what is called a soft job. In front of us lies an unknown or unreal world which we can mould according to every cowardice or triviality in our temperaments.

-The Man Who Was Orthodox (1963)

For it is always wiser to consider not so much why a thing is not enjoyable, as why we ourselves do not enjoy it.

-All Is Grist (1931)

There is only one thing in human psychology that deserves to be called courage. That is the power of loving a hopeless cause so much that it becomes a hopeful cause. All courage is the courage of the forlorn hope; you must first accept the forlornness; you must yourself create the hope.

-February 17, 1906, Daily News