The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will - that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings - then we may take it (that) it is worth paying.

We meet no ordinary people in our lives.

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.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

The literary man re-reads, other men simply read.