We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

I think God wants us to love Him more, not to love others less.

The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.

There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.

Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.

Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many.