Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
May God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.
The fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general Dance.
A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me?
The only unhappiness is not to love God.
The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.
A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.
When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.
Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.
It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.