Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.

Mercy detached from justice grows unmerciful.

He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.