If the world grows to worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows to worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldlyness by the world.

It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.

Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.

And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.

The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.

I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.

It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.