We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way (there is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

A particular ikon an aid to devotion may be itself a word of art, but that is logically accidental; its artistic merits will not make it a better ... ikon. They may make it a worse one.

It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself-to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed and then to find yourself still in bed.

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.

For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).