The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.

God loves us NOT because we're lovable, because He is love. Not because He needs to receive, because He delights to give.

We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.

We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven: a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all."

I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.

Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love.

The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.