I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.

Those who cannot conceive of Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.

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?

The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality of whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered to them.

The point is that for our ancestors, the universe was a picture; for modern physics it is a story.