Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Friendship is born at that moment when a single particular person claims to a different: 'What! You far too? I assumed I was the only real one particular.

The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the old Christian rule is, "Either marriage, with completely faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence."

All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world; but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.

A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid.

Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue, but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.