The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.
It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power – it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.
For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
I am struck here by the curious mixture of justice and injustice in our lives. We are blamed for our real faults but usually not on the right occasions.
Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.
But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder.
The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.
Look for the valleys, the green places, and fly through them. There will always be a way through.
The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.
Virtue – even attempted virtue – brings light; indulgence brings fog.
The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.
Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit.
Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.
The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.