My first attempt at writing

was based on the fact that I had collected over the years about 500 quotations from Catholic spiritual authors and I selected about 20 of these which I classified as Insights. I printed them off in a hurry because I thought I was going to die in an impending operation.

For a long time while preaching I had decided that to win a hearing from the congregation any discourse needs an arresting mother-idea or insight. On recovering, I thought I could make it into a decent-sized book by adding on some 20 meditations on the topics following the sequence I use for a retreat. This part constitutes Part Two of the present proposed book.

The style of English corresponds, I suppose to what was current in the 1950s. Although over the years I have tended to preach in a conversational way.