I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.

The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace.

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.

If we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling. ... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.