From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it.

Every story of conversion is the story of a blessed defeat.

[Milton's] argument is (a) St. Augustine was wrong in thinking God's only purpose in giving Adam a female, instead of a male, companion, was copulation. For (b) there is a "peculiar comfort" in the society of man and woman "beside, (i.e. in addition to, apart from) the genial bed"; and (c) we know from Scripture that something analogous to "play" or "slackening the cords" occurs even in God. That is why the Song of Songs describes a thousand raptures...far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment.

Everyone who believes in God at all believes that he knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow.

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.

Delight is incomplete until it is expressed.

What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'