It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.

The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.

God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

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

Nothing less will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.