I wasn't heroic because I was never in danger.

I respond very easily to outside events. One's life is a matter of chance. Nothing that you've arranged for yourself works out.

Some people revel in taking risks, and some go through life taking no risks at all.

Everyone thinks my story should be marked by heroism, but there was no risk to myself. You see, no-one in Prague at that time thought they were going to be at war with England.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.

The Church as a divine society possess an internal principle of life which is capable of assimilating the most diverse materials and imprinting her own image upon them.

The twentieth century had produced a literature in Ireland that kept a tense distance from the sources of faith - and for good reason. Irish writing had suffered a terrible censorship in the twentieth century.