I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.

It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It's not the sort of comfort they supply there.

if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service--with my sword--whenever he has leisure.

We were made not primarily that we may love God, but that God may love us.

Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.