“Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

“The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast...The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God...Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

“The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.”

“There are some great mysteries here and I believe that each one of us is better placed to understand them than any sceptical scientist or religious zealot, simply because our Universe is not the same as theirs. We are, each of us, on our own journey; and whilst that journey continually interacts with those of others, it always remains uniquely ours. To understand that journey, because it is ‘magical’, we must look at it with the eyes of a child. I hope the essential simplicity of ‘The 7 Gifts’ will encourage readers to do that.”

“We journey towards a home that does not halo our head with a special sun.Mythical women applaud us. A sea for us, a sea against us.”