Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.

Civilization - and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe - has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance ... It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis on which it rests ... Christianity ... is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them...

Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.

O God, make me good, but not yet.

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.