The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us.

We can conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of abuse of free will by His creatures: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when used as a weapon... But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and therefore, freedom of the will would be void.

To get even near humility, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.

Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.

It's not a question of God 'sending' us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

Not to be, but to seem, virtuous - it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.