Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.

If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.

But now I discovered the wonderful power of wine. I understood why men become drunkards. For the way it worked on me was not at all that it blotted out these sorrows, but that it made them seem glorious and noble, like sad music, and I somehow great and revered for feeling them.

In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.