William Inge

The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.

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

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.

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

The soul is dyed with the color of its leisure thoughts.

Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

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

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.

Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.