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.

And so for a time it looked as if all the adventures were coming to and end; but that was not to be.

The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?

Provocation doesn't make me ill-tempered: it only shows me how ill-tempered I am.