You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it.

If we forget our past, we won't remember our future and it will be as well because we won't have one.

It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.

One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord.

A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibility. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose real uses will probably always be hidden from us.