The generous one-dimensional desire to be a hero, to 'do the right thing', needs to be rounded out with the equally generous willingness to restrain apparent heroism when it might itself bring disaster.

Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.

show me someone not full of herself and i'll show you a hungry person

The further north you go, the more people concentrate on themselves, and in some sort of northern madness (no doubt due to the lack of sun) they ascribe to themselves too much. They make themselves responsible for their actions.

Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.

Those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians," W. H. Auden said in a sermon, "will do well to be extremely reticent on the subject. Indeed it is almost the definition of a Christian that he is somebody who knows he isn't one, either in faith or morals.

Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God.

It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him.

When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God's throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people.

There is something in human pride that can stand big troubles, but we need the supernatural grace and power of God to stand by us in the little things. The tiniest detail in which we obey has all the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. When we do our duty, not for duty's sake, but because we believe that God is engineering our circumstances in that way, then at the very point of our obedience the whole superb grace of God is ours.

Conceit makes the way God deals with me personally the binding standard for others.

We have to realize that we cannot earn or win anything from God through our own efforts. We must either receive it as a gift or do without it. The greatest spiritual blessing we receive is when we come to the knowledge that we are destitute. Until we get there, our Lord is powerless. He can do nothing for us as long as we think we are sufficient in and of ourselves. We must enter into His kingdom through the door of destitution.