We cannot “psychologize” the grace of God. God’s actions are outside and above our human sciences.
If you knew me in the past, please do not think that I am the same person that you are meeting today. I have experienced more of life, I have encountered new depths in those I love, I have suffered and prayed and I am different.
He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough.
Loneliness is the prison of the human spirit. When we are lonely, we pace back and forth in small, shut-in worlds.
Pain is a teacher from whom we can learn much.
Blacks are about seven times more likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty than whites.
We must be trying to learn who we really are rather than trying to tell ourselves who we should be.
What are the “ifs” and “buts” that limit my enjoyment of life?
To tell you my thoughts is to locate myself in a category. To tell you about my feelings is to tell you about me.
Growth is always a gradual process, a bridge slowly crossed and not a corner sharply turned.
There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process.
Our lives are shaped by those who love us.
Comparison is the death of true self-contentment.
God is to us like the sky to a small bird, which cannot see its outer limits and cannot reach its distant horizons, but can only lose itself in the greatness and immensity of the blueness.
Attitudes are capable of making the same experience either pleasant or painful.
Old cranks have practiced all their lives, just as old saints have likewise practiced all their lives. They just practiced different life principles.
By afflictions God is spoiling us of what otherwise might have spoiled us. When he makes the world too hot for us to hold, we let it go.
I have to be honest in asking myself: Do I really want to know and do God’s will? Or is it rather that I want God to do my will? Do I go to God with the assurance that I want only to know and do his will? Or do I rather first make my own plans and then insist that God make my dreams come true?
There’s the whole myth about rocket science. It’s really not that hard. It’s not brain surgery.
God alone can make a man a believer. Our part is to accept or reject his initiative.