The purpose of all opprobrious language is, not to describe, but to hurt - even when, like Hamlet, we make only the shadow-passes of a soliloquised combat. We call the enemy not what we think he is but what we think he would least like to be called.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us.

Now sir, said the bulldog in his business-like way. 'Are you a animal, vegetable, or mineral?' - The Magician's Nephew