“We read to know that we are not alone.”
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
“I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me.”
(This next one is one of my ultimate faves :)
“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”
“God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. ”
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”
And I'll end with this next quote. There are so many good ones that I am going to have to have a part two I think!! Please forgive my lack of originality.
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
