One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.

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

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should we not look forward to the arrival?

Many things, such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them.

And I was the Lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.