He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.

A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.

I don't want him to live forever, and I know that he's not going to live forever whether I want him to or not.

That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.

The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life.

There seems to be hardly any one among my acquaintance from whom I have not learned.