Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain.

It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns...It will remain a garden only if someone does all these things to it...If you want to see the difference between [the garden's] contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes rakes, shears, and a packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy, and fecundity beside dead, steril things. Just so, our 'decency and common sense' show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love.

What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug', commonplace neighbors at all.

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.

We must get over wanting to be needed.

Our problem with desire is that we want too little.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.