When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "hullo! i'm growing up." It is only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what people call "growing up.

I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking ourselves up each time...The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give up.

You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

To make Christianity a private affair while banishing all privacy is to relegate it to the rainbow's end or the Greek Calends.

We must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste.

Until you have given up yourself to Him, you will not have a real self.