"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
"I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey."
"Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead."
"The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey people. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest...."
"If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a "wandering to find home," why should we not look forward to the arrival?"
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
"No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelette."
"Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone."
"The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift."
"We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread."
"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."
"The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."
"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."
"Any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting of our own sins and forgiving those of others is ... usually bad for us."
"A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride."
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
"When we lose one blessing, another is often, most unexpectedly, given in its place."
"The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes."
"85 We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn, and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
"There seems no plan because it's all plan. There seems no center because it's all center."
"It was not for societies or states, that Christ died, but for men."
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
"The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."