That fierce imprisonment in the self is but the obverse of the self-giving which is absolute reality.

He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.

Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable.

It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect.

We want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are ... It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.

Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?