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.

A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.

We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are rebels who must lay down our arms.

Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all.

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.