Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord.' It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary color in the spectrum.

God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.

Love, while always forgiving of imperfections and mistakes, can never cease to will their removal.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity", and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.