Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through.

To free a man from suffering, he must be set right, put in health; and the health at the root of man's being, his rightness, is to be free from wrongness, that is, from sin. A man is right when there is no wrong in him. I do not mean set free from the sins he has done: that will follow; I mean the sins he is doing, or is capable of doing; the sins in his being which spoil his nature — the wrongness in him — the evil he consents to; the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does.

For the bliss of the animals lies in this, that, on their lower level, they shadow the bliss of those--few at any moment on the earth--who do not 'look before and after, and pine for what is not,' but live in the holy carelessness of the eternal now.

Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.

Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.

If there be a God and one has never sought him, it will be small consolation to remember that one could not get proof of his existence.

If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.