1There are two equal and eternal ways of looking at this twilight world of ours: we may see it as the twilight of evening or the twilight of morning; we may think of anything, down to a fallen acorn, as a descendant or as an ancestor.
2There are some people, nevertheless — and I am one of them — who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.
3We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy.
4The Nonsense writer, far from being a mere buffoon, is in a certain sense a serious person. He is not content to speak the things that are; he speaks the things that might be.
5Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook.
6The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that ‘faith is nonsense,’ does not know how truly he speaks.
7In one sense, of course, all good literature is a triumph of Nonsense, all great art is founded on the inscrutable.
8The great function of Nonsense is its assertion of the soul of wit and joy in the world against all the grey gradations of earnestness that have overlaid it.
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