Most of all, perhaps, we need an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has anything magical about it, but we cannot study the future.

If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.

It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

You can give the Devil too much or too little attention.

Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue, but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.

I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.

Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.