Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.

A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.

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.

Nothing less 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.

But why,... if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own? Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality.

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the old Christian rule is, "Either marriage, with completely faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence."

A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport to Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.