“1You said ‘The world is going back to Paganism’.Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the HouseSpill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn MusesTo pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.Hestia’s fire in every flat, rekindled, burned beforeThe Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient handsTended it. By the hearth the white-armd venerable motherDomum servabat, lanam faciebat. At the hourOf sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, graveBefore their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blushArose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped,Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the agedIs wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to dieDefending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.Thus with magistral hand the Puritan SophrosuneCooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears …You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.2Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.Over its icy bastions faces of giant and trollLook in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;But the bond wil1 break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hopeTo be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and dieHis second, final death in good company. The stupid, strongUnteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaitsWho walked back into burning houses to die with men,Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitalsMade critical comments on its workmanship and aim.Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the eventYour goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).”

“Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. . . look to Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

“Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”

“You are old Father William,' the young man said, 'and your hair has become very white; and yet you incessantly stand on your head-do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”