1.
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.
William Ralph Inge
2.
Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.
William Ralph Inge
3.
Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.
William Ralph Inge
4.
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
William Ralph Inge
5.
A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.
William Ralph Inge
6.
The happy people are those who are producing something.
William Ralph Inge
7.
The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.
William Ralph Inge
8.
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
William Ralph Inge
9.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.
William Ralph Inge
10.
Experience proves that none is so cruel as the disillusioned sentimentalist.
William Ralph Inge
11.
Take away fear, and the battle of Freedom is half won.
William Ralph Inge
12.
Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.
William Ralph Inge
13.
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
William Ralph Inge
14.
Originality is undetected plagiarism.
William Ralph Inge
15.
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.
William Ralph Inge
16.
It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.
William Ralph Inge
17.
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
William Ralph Inge
18.
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true.
William Ralph Inge
19.
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.
William Ralph Inge
20.
Don't break the silence unless you can improve on it.
William Ralph Inge
21.
There is no limit to the noble aspirations which the words "my country" may evoke.
William Ralph Inge
22.
Faith is an act of self-consecration, in which the will, the intellect, and the affections all have their place.
William Ralph Inge
23.
The command, 'Be fruitful and multiply', was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two persons.
William Ralph Inge
24.
Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.
William Ralph Inge
25.
Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.
William Ralph Inge
26.
No word in our language - not even "Socialism" - has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut.
William Ralph Inge
27.
The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism.
William Ralph Inge
28.
Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.
William Ralph Inge
29.
The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.
William Ralph Inge
30.
The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.
William Ralph Inge
31.
Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.
William Ralph Inge
32.
Let us remember, when we are inclined to be disheartened, that the private soldier is a poor judge of the fortunes of a great battle.
William Ralph Inge
33.
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.
William Ralph Inge
34.
The world belongs to those who think and act with it, who keep a finger on its pulse.
William Ralph Inge
35.
In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.
William Ralph Inge
36.
The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace.
William Ralph Inge
37.
Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.
William Ralph Inge
38.
I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.
William Ralph Inge
39.
When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve, "My dear, we live in an age of transition."
William Ralph Inge
40.
Faith begins as an experiment, and ends as an experience.
William Ralph Inge
41.
The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.
William Ralph Inge
42.
Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.
William Ralph Inge
43.
The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive.
William Ralph Inge
44.
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.
William Ralph Inge
45.
The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.
William Ralph Inge
46.
Admiration for ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners.
William Ralph Inge
47.
Beneath the dingy uniformity of international fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been; a splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a blood thirsty savage.
William Ralph Inge
48.
The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.
William Ralph Inge
49.
Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.
William Ralph Inge
50.
I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.
William Ralph Inge