Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.

We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment.

The value of the Old Testament may be dependant on what seems its imperfection. It may repel one use in order that we may be forced to use it in another way-to find the Word in it...to re-live, while we read, the whole Jewish experience of God's gradual and graded self-revelation, to feel the very contentions between the Word and the human material through which it works.

That fierce imprisonment in the self is but the obverse of the self-giving which is absolute reality.

And all the time - such is the tragic comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

You can’t get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first.

Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains", said Edmund, "That's because we've got something in them", replied Lucy.