In my experience, it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate the people who 'happen to be there.' Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.

We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.

But do you really mean, Sir," said Peter, "that there could be other worlds-all over the place, just round the corner-like that?" "Nothing is more probable," said the Profesor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, "I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is a nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again.