Sublime

In short, he is simply a sane man, and of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

The difficulty of believing in democracy is that it is so hard to believe—like God and most other good things.

But I do note the fact that the idealism of the leveller could be put in the form of an appeal to Scripture, and could not be put in the form of an appeal to Science.

That a man shall have a reasonable amount of comedy and poetry and even fantasy in his life is part of his spiritual health, which is for the service of God; and not merely for his mechanical health, which is now bound to the service of man.

For the glory of this world is a very small and priggish affair, and these men are too large to get in line with it.

But this is not a religious work, and I must submit to those very narrow intellectual limits which the absence of theology always imposes.

As seen by his neighbours, he is as safe as if immured in a fortress; but as seen by himself he may be forever careering through the sky or crashing towards the earth in a flying–ship.

In modern England common sense appears to mean putting up with existing conditions. For us a practical politician really means a man who can be thoroughly trusted to do nothing at all; that is where his practicality comes in. The French feeling—the feeling at the back of the Revolution—was that the more sensible a man was, the more you must look ou

In art he was a realist because he was an idealist; for realism is more impossible than any other ideal.