“Have you ever seen a person who was receiving a blood transfusion? The blood was precious, life-giving, and certainly not repulsive. The blood of Christ may seem to be a grim and repulsive subject . . .[but] the blood of Christ is precious.”

“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”

“experience, and most of those experiences are painful and costly. If you can learn from someone else’s pain and expense, you are a wise person, indeed. I would encourage you to read this book, cover-to-cover, but also keep it as a reference text using the sections and individual columns as a resource you can revisit as your life journey calls for specific wisdom. It is my hope that this is not a one-time encounter that you and I are having. My hope is, in the coming months and years as you travel toward your own personal”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.”

“One step across the dividing line, so like the one between the living and the dead and you enter an unknown world of suffering and death. What will you find there? Who will be there? There, just just beyond the field, that tree, that sunlit roof? No one knows, and yet you want to know. You dread crossing that line, and yet you want to cross it. You know sooner or later you will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably found out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all around you just the same- strong, excited and full of life.' This is what all men think when they get sight of the enemy, or they feel it if they do not think it, and it is this feeling that gives a special lustre and a delicious edge to the awareness of everything that is now happening.”

“Don’t despise little things that contain tiny miracles. Enjoy little actions!”

“Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done.”

“No knowledge is ever wasted. To quote the apostle Paul: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).”

“You are a child of the Most High God.”

“If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

“In our desire to make Christ known and to increase the influence of the church, we are many times prone to think that Christians and the church can be made popular with the unbelieving world. This is a grave mistake on the part of the church.”

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

“I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”

“We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.”

“Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared, but only men of character are trusted.”