The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.

Men propound mathematical theorems in besieged cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on the scaffold, discuss a new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.

To love is to be vulnerable.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.

We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.

If we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.

He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.