And it is utterly true that he who cannot find wonder, mystery, awe, the sense of a new world and an undiscovered realm in the places by the Gray's Inn Road will never find these secrets elsewhere.

The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.

It appears to me that it [sin] is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. There are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, in the mass, are amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints, and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewer still.

There are certain scenes, certain hills and valleys and groves of pines which demand that a story shall be written about them. I would refine; I would say that the emotions aroused by these external things reverberating in the heart are indeed the story; or all that signifies the story....We translate a hill into a tale, conceive lovers to explain a brook, turn the perfect into the imperfect.

Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.

I dream in fire but work in clay.

We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me?