They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.

Men have prayed in prison, men have prayed in slums and concentration camps. It's only the middle class who demand to pray in suitable surroundings.

She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.

I write about situations that are common, universal might be more correct, in which my characters are involved and from which only faith can redeem them, though often the actual manner of the redemption is not immediately clear. They sin, but there is no limit to God's mercy and because this is important, there is a difference between not confessing in fact, and the complacent and the pious may not realize it.

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.