“Progress in evil was quick and easy; Apollyon was not a chap who hid himself and he gave every assistance in his power. The growth in goodness was so slow, at times so flat, so dull, and like the White Queen one had to run so fast to stay where one was, let alone progress; and there were few men who dared to say they had found God. It was easy to be a clever sinner, for the race to an earthly visible goal was short to run, so impossibly hard to be a wise saint, with the goal set at so vast a distance from this world and clouded with such uncertainty.”

“All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law as of all benign laws is fear.”

“Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.”

“Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.”

“All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law as of all benign laws is fear.”

“... 'Many waters cannot quench love' was said of divine, not human, love, which the Dean knew was not always tough enough to survive the indifference of misery. That was one of the chief reasons why he struggled to do away with misery.”

“Ferranti's thoughts had been his. As before he had understood his remorse so now he understood the mental chains that had imprisoned him. The poor wretch could not move. Misery had become apathy and apathy had brought the inevitable paralysis of the will.”

“A well-trained dog is like religion, it sets the deserving at their ease and is a terror to evildoers.”

“She knew that pleasure, to be pleasure, must come to an end.”

“All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.”

“There had come to him one of those moments of quiet despair that lie in wait for even the happiest. Stealthy-footed they leap upon us, as we walk along the street, as we sit at evening with fruit and wine upon the table and laughter on our lips, as we wake suddenly from sleep in the hour before dawn; neither at our work nor our play nor our prayers are we safe, those moments can leap at any time out of the blackness around human life and suddenly the colors that we have nailed to our mast are there no longer and all that we have grasped is dust.”