Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not see.

Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.

Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.

Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years.

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.