Orthodoxy; cites

“The new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact.” (p.13).

“The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logitian seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.” (p.20).

“The things I believed most then [quan era petit], the things i believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.” (p.41).

“In fairyland we avoid the word 'law'; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it.[...] All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.” (p.44-45).

“The test of all happiness is gratitude.” (p.47).

“I know this feeling [de cansament existencial] fills our epoch, and I think it freezes our epoch. For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.” (p.64). (Aquesta cita sembla feta per desciure l'adolescència).

“Birth is as solemn a parting as death.” (p.70).