Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.
We do not want to merely “see” beauty. We want to be united with it, to receive it into ourselves, to become part of it.
Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect.
Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’
The holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
I’d sooner live among people who don’t cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating at cards.
There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again.
The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other...
Regarding the debate about faith and works: It’s like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most important.
It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
The continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.
You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another.
I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.
Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.
As long as he doesn’t convert it into action, it does not matter how much a man thinks about his repentance.
Obedience is the key that opens every door.
Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You.’
The unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past.