“In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use.”

There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal.

God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

Mundus vult decipi’—the world wants to be deceived.

I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.

Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man.

To sense a ray of God’s radiance in the jungles of history.

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.

Few are guilty, but all are responsible.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal, and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of his needs.

The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.

There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.

The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.

If you want to create vital, long-lasting love, you must become a master of verbal & nonverbal appreciation.

Spare yourself from seeking love, approval, or appreciation-from anyone. And watch what happens in reality, just for fun.

Which led me into a new appreciation of middle [William Butler ] Yeats, of the short three-beat line and forward-driving syntax, and that paid in, in turn to a poem like Casualty in Field Work.

In the 1970s, for example, I found myself learning to relish the poetry of Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and getting a handle on poetry of plainer speech than I had dwelt with heretofore.

If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.”

Our lives are filled with meeting wonderful people. Make sure those that have become a part of your life hear your words of appreciation.

Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.

No one who appreciates the shortness of this life and the eternality of the next can ever say, ‘I’m bored’