Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

Anyone who survives a southern childhood has enough material to last a lifetime.

If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.

I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962

He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

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.

Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.