In the name of the Fathers, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes-I mean Amen.

But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works.

I see you are an idiot, whatever else you may be.

A glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon.

The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive.

Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next.