And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself.

All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only beloved who will never pass away.

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.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.

We meet no ordinary people in our lives.

Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.