I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.

You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.

No one can say 'He jests at scars who never felt a wound' for I have never for one moment been in a state of mind to which even the imagination of serious pain was less than intolerable. If any man is safe from the danger of under-estimating this adversary, I am that man.

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.

All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.

What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favorable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug', commonplace neighbors at all.

Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.