When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.

A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.

At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder.