All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

I have seen landscapes . . . which, under a particular light, make me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.

If a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

If nothing in this world satisfies me, perhaps it is because I was made for another world.