It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us.

I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else

Nothing less will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.

I want God, not my idea of God.

But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.