Quotes from Sheldon Vanauken

How strange that we cannot love time. It spoils our loveliest moments. Nothing quite comes up to expectations because of it. We alone: animals, so far as we can see, are unaware of time, untroubled. Time is their natural environment. Why do we sense that it is not ours?

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 do not know at all that it is the same with others.

There was something tender and gentle about our love, something a little shy, that was like early spring.

But in the books again, great joy through love seemed always to go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain—if, indeed, they went together. If

If there were a choice—and he suspected there was—a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.

those who condemn what they do not understand are, surely, little men.

Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine's love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What would be a bribe if it came first had better come last.

What we did see was that jealousy is fear: it can corrode even if quite baseless.

But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you'll get away!

But Love is the final reality; and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed in wisdom.