It is a dreadful truth that the state of having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most.... It is good of Him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.

Everything except God has some natural superior; everything except unformed matter has some natural inferior.

After an error you need not only to remove the causes but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an 'undoing' is required.

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk.

Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

We have lost the invaluable faculty of being shocked a faculty which has hitherto almost distinguished the Man or Woman from the beast or child.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.