Great Throughts Treasury

"It was so important to think quiet loving thought about people in idle moments, especially perhaps about the dead, who being substanceless so desperately need our thoughts."

"We can only learn to love by loving."

"Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins."

"Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves."

"Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference."

"Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

"I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better war; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back."

"One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."

"I hate solitude, but i'm afraid if intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself."