Out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.
I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
A woman's heart should be so close to God that a man should have to chase Him to find her.
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
Die before you die, there is no chance after.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
The death of a beloved is an amputation.
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
