Quotes from Sheldon Vanauken

The killer of love is creeping separateness. Inloveness is a gift of the gods, but then it is up to the lovers to cherish or to ruin. Taking love for granted, especially after marriage. Ceasing to do things together. Finding separate interests. 'We' turning into T . Self. Self-regard: what I want to do. Actual selfishness only a hop away. This was the way of creeping separateness.

The sheer quality of the Christians we met at Oxford shattered our stereotype, and thenceforward a reference in a book or conversation to someone's being a Christian called up an entirely new image.

Sometimes the two of them had gone out in the night from his cabin to steal a watermelon or two from some farmer—stolen watermelons are sweeter—and brought them back where, on top of the haystack beside the cabin, they would eat the dripping hearts while bats flitted across the stars. His

One of the three points of my childhood code — which is something of a key to this book — was 'Never betray a friend.' That might imply that friendship was important to me: and so it was, to me and to Davy, too. We believed in deep and genuine friendship, and we held our friends and our families very dear and were intensely loyal to them.

What is important, perhaps, is that the moment was a culmination of all we had ever dreamt: not just Grey Goose, not just the good life—the tuneful life without the pressure of time—but also the green tree of the pagan love flourishing within the Shining Barrier.

The books of course had shaped his mind in a hundred ways, especially perhaps the poetry. He thought of the master at his school who had awakened him to the glory of Shakespeare, and his own discovery of Shelley. So many of the books, the best-loved ones, had been about England, and of course the poems were England itself. As a child England had seemed much nearer than New York or the cowboy west.

He remembered his own code that he had made up when he was about twelve, a code of three points only: 'Never betray a friend. Never betray beauty. Never betray the sword.' By that last he had meant being brave when he was afraid.

It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don't know at all that it is the same with others.

though I wouldn't have admitted it, even to myself, I didn't want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted Him approving from a considerable distance. I didn't want to be thinking of Him. I wanted to be free—like Gypsy. I wanted life itself, the color and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn't want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ.

A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion.

If it's half as good as the half we've known, here's Hail! to the rest of the road.

It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming first but many balances.

Goodness & love are as real as their terrible opposites, and, in truth, far more real, though I say this mindful of the enormous evils... But love is the final reality; and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed of wisdom.

Between the probable and proved there yawns A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd, Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse, Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns Our only hope: to leap into the Word That opens up the shuttered universe.

That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.

Whatever one of us asked the other to do - it was assumed the asker would weigh all the consequences - the other would do. Thus one might wake the other in the night and ask for a cup of water; and the other would peacefully (and sleepily) fetch it. We, in fact, defined courtesy as 'a cup of water in the night'. And we considered it a very great courtesy to ask for the cup as well as to fetch it.

To believe with certainty, somebody said, one has to begin by doubting.

When we first fell in love in the dead of winter, we said, "If we aren't more in love in lilactime, we shall be finished." But we were more in love: for love must grow or die.

Signs must be read with caution. The history of Christendom is replete with instances of people who misread the signs.

It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian'. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming firsts but many balances.

The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything. You are so sure you know what the promise promised! And the danger is that when what He means by 'wind' appears you will ignore it because it is not what you thought it would be—as He Himself was rejected because He was not like the Messiah the Jews had in mind.

Both Heaven and Hell are retroactive, all of one's life will eventually be known to have been one or the other.

I had always served beauty. Davy and I together had loved beauty. Now, maybe, I was worshipping beauty in the Christian God while Davy was worshipping God. There may be danger in the love of beauty, though it seems treason to say it. Perhaps it can be a snare.

The personality of Jesus emerged from the Gospels with astonishing consistency. Whenever they were written, they were written in the shadow of a personality so tremendous that Christians who may never have seen him knew him utterly: that strange mixture of unbearable sternness and heartbreaking tenderness.