“Mundus vult decipi’—the world wants to be deceived.”

Every little deed counts.

The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one’s own tradition with reverence for different traditions.

We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.

Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath.

We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.

There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.

Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.

Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind’s desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.

To be spiritual is to be amazed.

I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.

The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.

Understanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind.

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.

Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition.

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.