William Ralph Inge

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.

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.

There are no rewards or punishments – only consequences.

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.

Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.

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

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

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

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

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