If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.

It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.

The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want

Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.

To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'