Sheldon Vanauken Quotes

“Those who condemn what they do not understand are, surely, little men.”

″…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.”

“And I am sure it is never sadness—a proper, straight natural response to loss—that does people harm, but all the other things, all the resentment, dismay, doubt and self-pity with it.”

“The spring can’t last.”

“Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity - and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order″

“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.”

“Whatever one of us asked the other to do - it was assumed the asker would weigh all the consequences - the other would do.”

“He chuckled at the memory, and then, in the instant, tears were burning in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. That was always the way of grief: laughter and tears, joy and sorrow.”

“The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians - when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.”

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

“The aged winter fled away Before the bugles of the May, And love, dear love, arose. But when spring’s glory goes The lilacs of our love shall stay, Forever Maytime sweet and gay, Until the lilacs close Beneath the deathly snows.”

“What we did see was that jealousy is fear: it can corrode even if quite baseless. There was only one answer: total trust. And, we said, if that trust were ever violated, even the least bit, then a quick end; for trust can never be restored.”

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

“If its half as good as the half we’ve known, heres 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.”

“He had been wont to despise emotions: girls were weak, emotions–tears– were weakness. But this morning he was thinking that being a great brain in a tower, nothing but brain, wouldn’t be much fun.”

“But feelings – feelings are emotions! He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions.”

“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.”

“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.”

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