"The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience. 'The will,' says Francis Thompson, 'is the lynch-pin of the faculties.' We stand or fall by its strength or its infirmity. Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue. Parental legislation for the benefit of the weak leaves them as weak as ever ... They may go to heaven in leading-strings, but they cannot conquer Apollyon on the way."

“The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.”

“What the world asks now are state reforms and social reforms,—in other words, the reformation of our neighbours. What the Gospel asks, and has always asked, is the reformation of ourselves ... Mr. Chesterton spoke but the truth when he said that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and not tried.”

“People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.”

“Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the Earth peopled as ever by the inept.”

“The sentiment of to-day is social and philanthropic. ... we must forever bear in mind that sentiment is subjective, and a personal thing. However exalted and however ardent, it cannot be accepted as a scale for justice, or as a test for truth.”

“...why should our self-appointed instructors assume that because we do not chatter about a thing, we have never heard of it?”