The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths--but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.

The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gifts...Thus a heavy task is laid upon Gift-love. It must work toward its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say 'They need me no longer' should be our reward. But the instinct, simply in its own nature, has no power to fulfill this law.

But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it deserves.

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.

If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.

The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.

You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.