Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here's the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person - and he would not need it.

There was nothing medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.

A Christian is not someone who never goes wrong, but one who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin again, because the Christ-life is inside him.

As for wrinkles--Pshaw! Why shouldn't we have wrinkles? Honorable insignia of long service in this warfare.

Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.

I wonder if people who asked for God to intervene in our world, really know what they are asking. Will they want to be there when God really does intervene?

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, "Here comes one who will augment our loves." For in this love "to divide is not to take away.