“Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out …. What do modern men say when apparently confronted with something that cannot … be naturally explained? Well, most modern men immediately talk nonsense. When such a thing is currently mentioned, in novels or newspapers or magazine stories, the first comment is always something like, ‘But, my dear fellow, this is the twentieth century.’ It is worth having a little training in philosophy if only to avoid looking so ghastly a fool as that. It has on the whole rather less sense or meaning than saying, ‘But, my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.’ If miracles cannot happen, they cannot happen in the twentieth century or in the twelfth. If they can happen, nobody can prove that there is a time when they cannot happen.”

“When I fancied that I stood alone, I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the Yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.”