But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.

Die before you die, there is no chance after.

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

All the time the joke is that the word "mine" in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either [Satan] or God will say "mine" of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.

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