The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them,and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols,breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

But however happy you are feeling, you can't talk with your mouth full of snow.

For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

Don't shine so that others can see you. Shine so that through you, others can see HIM.

Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be 'given' in the facts of experience.

Gratitude exclaims, very properly, 'How good of God to give me this.'

The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that.