Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works.

Nothing is wonderful except in the abnormal, and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.

I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse... Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil.

Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?-Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?

When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive.

When golden moments come, when God enables one really to pray without words, who but a fool would reject the gift?

When he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity; but years later he realized that while his lips had been saying 'Oh Lord, make me chaste,' his heart had been secretly adding, 'But please don't do it just yet.