The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own.

The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing than worshipping ... 'Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god.

Periods' are largely an invention of the historians. The poets themselves are not conscious of living in any period and refuse to conform to the scheme.

Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature.

A God. The God. One word can make all the difference in the world.

He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

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