"Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience."
"It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."
"In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can to education today is to teach few subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life."
"We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely"
"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison-you do not know God at all."
"The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own."