The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.

The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.

God, stay with me, let no word cross my lips that is not your word, no thoughts enter my mind that are not your thoughts, no deed ever be done or entertained by me that is not your deed.

Secrecy is as essential to intelligence as vestments and incense to a Mass or darkness to a spiritualist séance and must at all times be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

The three most disastrous inventions of our time have been the birth control pill, the camera and nuclear weaponry. The first offers sex in terms of sterility, the second reality in terms of fantasy, and the third security in terms of destruction.

All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and receive what is offered, this is the art of living.

The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.