If you don't listen to theology, that won't mean you have no ideas about God, it will mean you have a lot of wrong ones.

But why,... if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own? Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality.

Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs

Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased.

Oh, I can see it happening, age after age, and growing worse the more you reveal your beauty: the son turning his back on the mother and the bride on her groom, stolen away by this everlasting calling, calling, calling of the gods. Taken where we can't follow. It would be far better for us if you were foul and ravening. We'd rather you drank their blood than stole their hearts. We'd rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal.

It is always the novice who exaggerates.

...this new idea of cure instead of punishment, so humane in seeming, had in fact deprived the criminal of all rights and by taking away the name Punishment made the thing infinite.