“There was a young man who said "GodMust find it exceedingly oddTo think that the treeShould continue to beWhen there's no one about in the quad."Reply:"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;I am always about in the quad.And that's why the treeWill continue to beSince observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

“It is possible to argue that the true business of faith is not to produce emotional conviction in us, but to teach us to do without it.”

“When suave politeness, tempering bigot zeal, corrected 'I believe' to 'one does feel'. ”

“Hope is something that is demanded of us; it is not, then, a mere reasoned calculation of our chances. Nor is it merely the bubbling up of a sanguine temperament; if it is demanded of us, it lies not in the temperament but in the will... Hoping for what? For delivereance from persecution, for immunity from plague, pestilence, and famine...? No, for the grace of persevering in his Christian profession, and for the consequent achievement of a happy immortality. Strictly speaking, then, the highest exercise of hope, supernaturally speaking, is to hope for perseverance and for Heaven when it looks, when it feels, as if you were going to lose both one and the other.”

“If a man tells you that he is fond of the Imitation, view him with sudden suspicion; he is either a dabbler or a Saint.”

“Can anything matter, unless there is Somebody who minds?”

“Xas sighed. "But I don't want to talk about God. Why do I? Sometimes I feel God is all over me like a pollen and I go about pollinating things with God."Sobran opened his eyes and Xas smiled at him. Soban said, "I did think that you talked about God to persuade me you weren't evil. But I've decided that, for you, everything is somehow to the glory of God, whether you like it or not.""I feel that, yes. My imagination was first formed in God's glory. But I think God didn't make the world, so I think my feelings are mistaken."This was the heresy for which Xas was thrown out of Heaven. Sobran was happy it had finally appeared. It was like a clearing. Sobran could almost see this clearing - a silent, sunny, green space into which not a thing was falling, not even the call of a cuckoo. Xas thought the world was like this, an empty clearing into which God had wandered.”