William Ralph Inge

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.

Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.

Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.

Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.

The soul is dyed with the color of its leisure thoughts.

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.

Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.

Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.

It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average person.

It was said that Mr. Gladstone could persuade most people of most things, and himself of anything.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.

The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.

Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific men have constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach.