Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don’t feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they’re stuck right where they started: Guilty.

First of all, don’t ever let them try to define that word “happiness” for themselves. They can’t and that’s precisely what we never want them to realize. Keep it a vague bright mist hovering about their heads. Locate it securely at the end of implausible rainbows. Hide it snugly in some corner of their thoughts they rarely visit.

The Americans want a surplus stocked up to supply their every whim. And their appeals are much less requests, more demands. Indeed, the phrase might be more aptly put: Demand and Surplus.

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the parties involved have entered into the following arrangement: What is the least we can all agree on and still get along? Of course, you can see this means no one is pleased.

Joy is that paradox where a man so trusts, is so enraptured, as to be caught up and lost in the other, while at the same time, being utterly known by the other, thus utterly himself.

Truth, with a capital T, was swapped for Fact with a capital F, then both lower-cased —facts the new trues.

No earthly act escapes its eternal echoes, echoes more substantial than the acts themselves.

When some one mortal yet eternal human merely being relying on precisely nothing but the audacious love of his Maker, calls on Him to part the Heavens, well, we are undone.

Make them imagine repentance more like an appearance in court before a cranky old judge, less like a child knocking on his father’s study door to have a chat.