“For don't we all long for the comfort of absolutes?”

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.”

“We don't talk. We just swing. There is comfort in the act of swinging. True, unexpected comfort.”

“How often when we are comfortable, we begin to long for something new! ”

“We don't get better by chance, we only become better by absolute change.”

“This is the fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion.”