Citations

A sense of identity is the gift of love, and only love can give it.

Life is a reaching out for something or someone. That is its definition.

Unbelief is easier than belief, much less demanding and subtly flattering because the agnostic felt himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And then unbelief haunted by faith produces a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involved real suffering.

Human nature is intractable stuff, hard jagged stuff, the kind of stuff that dreams are wrecked on.

There is no greater tyranny than that of social custom.

There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year.

We all of us try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations.

In this world death has a habit of intervening before we can pay our debts, and the only thing to be done is to pay them to another.

The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth.

As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that makes an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself. (1960)