“Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.”

“A man cannot impart the true feeling of things to others unless he himself has experienced what he is trying to tell of.”

“Nobody can write such ironic things unless he has a deep sense of injustice-injustice to those members of the race who are victims of the stupid, the pretentious and the hypocritical.”

“The good life is not found in dreams of progress,but in coping with tragic contingencies.We have been reared on religions and philosophies that deny the experience of tragedy.Can we imagine a life that is not founded on the consolations of action?Or are we too lax and coarse even to dream of living without them?”

“The personal desolation Christ is experiencing on the cross is what you and I should be experiencing--but instead, Jesus is bearing it, and bearing it all alone.Why alone?He's alone so that we might never be alone.”

“And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it.”