“It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.”

In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.

Every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

There’s a virtue in slowness, which we have lost.

We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

Sooner or later; one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

Destruction after all is a form of creation.

An autobiography is only ‘a sort of life’ – it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in…We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers.

I don’t believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.

I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.

One is not righteous who does much, but the one who, without work, believes much in Christ. The law says, ‘Do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘Believe in this,’ and everything is already done.

I always believe if you’re stuck in a hole and maybe things aren’t going well you will come out stronger. Everything in life is this way.

Faith is believing what we cannot prove.

The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.

There’s a little voice, that lives inside all, waiting for us to believe.