If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea, and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

Joy is the serious business of heaven. Our merriment must be between people who take each other seriously.

The human heart is not unchanging (nay, changes almost out of recognition in the twinkling of an eye).

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.

As long as you are proud, you cannot know God.