Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

The Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.

The Christian claim is: Nothing explains the facts better than an all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent god creating the universe and sending Jesus to spread his message. This is about as remarkable a claim as could be stated, and yet it is tossed out lightly. Christians seem to imagine that "God did it" is as plausible as the natural explanation that stories grow with the retelling. The Christian has the burden of proof, and it's an enormous burden given this enormous claim.

Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all the acts and events that fill time are the definition, and it must be lived.

The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded.