“So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.”

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?

Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.

There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.

Being free means being free for the other, because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.

The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ.

Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.

Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.

Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.

Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.

May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.

Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.

If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.

Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.

Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.

It is a comfort to the miserable to have comrades in misfortune, but it is a poor comfort after all.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher.

If there is something comforting – religious, if you want – about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

I’m quite deaf now; such a comfort.

Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule; taking the utmost care never to apply those arts improperly.

A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books– I trow that countenance cannot lye Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

Creativity happens where it’s dangerous and scary: where you’re not comfortable.