He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.

That part of Rostrevor which overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia.

I can answer that only by hearsay, returned the Guide, for pain is a secret which he has shared with your race and not with mine; and you would find it as hard to explain suffering to me as I would find it to reveal to you the secrets of the Mountain people. But those who know best say this, that any liberal man would choose the pain of this desire, even for ever, rather than the peace of feeling it no longer; and that though the best thing is to have, the next best is to want, and the worst of all is not to want.

I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place [if we anticipate and look for it, rather than wallow in our 'supposed loss'. It can be helpful to think of the loss of that blessing as simply necessary to make way for another different blessing].

No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.