Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' - or else not.

We only learn to behave ourselves in the presence of God.

Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult.

The assumption that things which have been conjured in the past will always be conjured in the guiding principle not of rational but of animal behavior.

In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people's, we do not accept them easily enough.

There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.

Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.