You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.
There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.
That part of Rostrevor which overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia.
Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’
Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.
Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love.
And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself.
God has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.
Provocation doesn’t make me ill-tempered: it only shows me how ill-tempered I am.
Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.
Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake.
Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.
A real desire to believe all the good you can of others and to make others as comfortable as you can will solve most of the problems.
The value of the individual does not lie in him. He receives it by union with Christ.
It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.
You are certainly under the guidance of the Holy Ghost or you wouldn’t have come where you now are.
I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to “rejoice” as much as by anything else.
Don’t shine so that others can see you. Shine so that through you, others can see HIM.
I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. It doesn’t change God – it changes me.
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.