We all of us try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations. - Elizabeth Goudge

Human nature is intractable stuff, hard jagged stuff, the kind of stuff that dreams are wrecked on.

There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year.

In this world death has a habit of intervening before we can pay our debts, and the only thing to be done is to pay them to another.