In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen. ... Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ.

To say that I was born again, to use that traditional phrase, is to say too much because I remained in most ways as self-centered and squeamish after the fact as I was before, and God knows remain so still. And in another way to say that I was born again is to say too little because there have been more than a few such moments since, times when from beyond time something too precious to tell has glinted in the dusk, always just out of reach, like fireflies.

Men talk much of a new birth. The fact is fundamental. But the mistake is in treating it as an incident which can only happen to a man once in a lifetime: whereas the whole journey of life is a succession of them. A new life springs up in the soul with the discovery of every new agency by which the soul is raised to a higher level of wisdom: goodness and joy.

The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler.

Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.

When the will loves anything that is below it in dignity, it degrades itself.

The higher the love, the more demands will be made on us to conform to that ideal.

One would not generally put garbage into the stomach, but too often one will put garbage into the mind.

The Church knows too that to marry the present age and its spirit is to become a widow in the next.

The question: 'is the Euclidean geometry true?' has no significance for Poincaré, for these is no such thing as one geometry being more true than another.

Sanctity means separation from the spirit of the world, with immersion in the activity of the world. Saints would be in the world, not of it; they would have no public relation boosters to publicize them; they would never ask for money; perhaps the one venture which would stand out most in their lives would be poverty of spirit.

There are ultimately only two possible adjustments in life: one is to suit our lives to principles; the other is to suit principles to our lives. "If we do not live as we think, we soon begin to think as we live.