It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.

We do not want to merely “see” beauty. We want to be united with it, to receive it into ourselves, to become part of it.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

We were made to be neither cerebral men nor visceral men, but Men. Not beasts nor angels but Men - things at once rational and animal.

Mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people

Authority exercised with humility, and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.

For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.