Quotes from Dean William R. Inge

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat in the active and passive.

A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it.

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

Religion is a way of walking not a way of talking.

Anxiety is the interest paid on trouble before it is due.

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before he is born.

Public opinion: a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for any one of us who is not content to be the average man.

There are two kinds of fools: one says, 'This is old, therefore it is good'; the other says, 'This is new, therefore it is better.'

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

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.

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

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

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states - Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.

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

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.