When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words.

He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with gulls screaming over him. He would look over the edge of the sofa down into the sea. Or he was hearing music… But "Lovely!" he used to cry and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had fought, who was brave, crying. And he would lie listening until suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames!

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not

She must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.

It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!

The pain of aloneness and pointlessness is piercing. It demands relief. That single fact — that the pain of living apart from God is unbearable — exposes our sinfulness as horribly grotesque and foolish. We insist on finding relief without coming to God on His terms.

Father, I leave them in your hands, for mine are far too small and weak. You are God, and I thank you.

Facing a situation head on was the only way to deal with anything. I learned the lesson early.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.

Why don't you cry again, you little wretch? -Because I'll never cry for you again.

When a plunge is to be made into the water, it's of no use lingering on the bank.

A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pitty in all the glittering multitude.