It is always the novice who exaggerates.

And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.

First be sure that you know exactly what you want to say. Then be sure you have said exactly that.

You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

She did not shut it properly because she knew that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one.

If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. It cuts its own throat.