Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.
In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.
A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all – and more amusing.
It is always the novice who exaggerates.
Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.
And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.
Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.
A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.
It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it.
Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, ’sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those Who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.
What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.
Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?
Tea should be taken in solitude.
A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.