Muriel Lester quotes:

Given is the word. Given publicly, on the first Good Friday, on a hill, in the sight of all, was the visible demonstration of the only permanent way to overcome evil. Human nature demands something more enduring than the unquiet equilibrium of rival powers.

how ridiculous we often are in our negations, our strutting self importance, our penchant for making labels and sticking them on people. As though labelling a person disposed of him!

It's obvious that five days is just enough to give one a false impression of any country.

a victor's peace is usually vindictive and stirs up a passion for revenge a generation or so later.

Spying is always an expensive method of acquiring information.

Publicity is the only thing some people fear. An aroused public opinion has been the cause of most reforms. Telling the truth is perhaps the pacifist's only weapon. Over and over again, even the suggestion that one may publish the facts has changed a scornful, bullying opponent into an almost subservient helper. But how dangerous it is!

Consider yourself not ready to start the day, ill equipped, unprepared to mix with your fellows, until you have spent at least fifteen minutes in prayer. Count it as much a social necessity as washing.

I was trying to make them face their fears. Youth spends so much energy trying to forget them. There's the fear of failure in examinations, fear of sex, fear of not getting a job, fear of unpopularity, fear of appearing naïve. Youth discovers many bunkholes in which to hide when frightened. They are mostly unhealthy, none of them bombproof.

It is a fact, however, that there is no rest for the wicked.

No sauce equals appetite.

once your eyes get opened to pacifism, you can't shut them again. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. You may bitterly regret the fact that you happen to be one of the tiny minority of the human race who have caught this angle of vision, but you can't help it.

The first casualty in every war is truth.

How insensitive, inartistic, unscientific, and ungracious it is to take anything for granted!