Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.