Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

That which is truly human no generation learns from the one before it. No generation learns from another how to love. No generation has a shorter task assigned to it except insofar as the previous generation shirked its task and deluded itself.

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

It takes moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.