The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.
In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need for an equal law in Utopia; and, as usual, I found that Christianity had been there before me.

The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness.
I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old.

For me, in the ancient and partly in the modern sense, God answered the prayer, "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings." Without vanity, I really think there was a moment when I could have invented the marriage vow (as an institution) out of my own head; but I discovered, with a sigh, that it had been invented already.

But, since it would be too long a business to show how, fact by fact and inch by inch, my own conception of Utopia was only answered in the New Jerusalem, I will take this one case of the matter of marriage as indicating the converging drift, I may say the converging crash of all the rest.
When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about impossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss an important distinction.
In modern ideal conceptions of society there are some desires that are possibly not attainable: but there are some desires that are not desirable.

That all men should live in equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or may not be attained.