If God thinks this state of war in the universe is a price worth paying for free will--that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings--then we may take it it is worth paying.

A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.

An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. [speaking of George MacDonald]

When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

There seems no plan because it is all plan.

As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element.'