Everything that God sends us is beautiful, even though we may not understand it - and we only need to give it some proper thought to see that what God gives is just sheer happiness; the suffering is what we add to it.

I swore that I would not suffer from the world's grief and the world's stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me.

Even the most sadistic and destructive man is human, as human as the saint.

Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.

perhaps the problem of evil is a human problem, one of an egotistical mind-set, an anthropocentric bent in our thinking and perspective.

If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself_ and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.