You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.

All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.

But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

For the Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work.

Sainthood lies in the habit of referring the smallest actions to God.