Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.

At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.

The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery.

Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.

Only He who really lived a human life (and I presume that only one did) can fully taste the horror of death.