Men often take their imagination for their heart and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

To be converted you have to destroy your past destroy your history. You have to stamp on it you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist it doesn't matter.'

An overflow of good converts to bad.

After all the past is our only real guide to the future and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

Scientists will eventually stop flailing around with solar power and focus their efforts on harnessing the only truly unlimited source of energy on the planet: stupidity. I predict that in the future scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel.

It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base something guarded not merely from attack but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts the desert or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed.

But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews where churches' bare ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living a Labour government - yes a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.

It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.

Of all our dreams today there is none more important - or so hard to realise - than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.

As man sows so shall he reap. In works of fiction such men are sometimes converted. More often in real life they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.