“And now that I don’t want to own anything any more and am free, now I suddenly own everything, now my inner riches are immeasurable.”

Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.

Suffering has always been with us; does it really matter in what form it comes? All that matters is how we bear it and how we fit it into our lives.

Life is good, after all…and that’s what stays with me, even now, even when I’m about to be packed off to Poland.

I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.

Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship, sailing across endless oceans, never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, it will find mooring for a moment.

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.

Sometimes I feel that every word spoken and every gesture made merely serve to exacerbate misunderstandings. Then what I would really like is to escape into a great silence and impose that silence on everyone else.

I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned.

One must also accept that one has ‘uncreative’ moments. The more honestly one can accept that, the quicker these moments will pass.

To live fully, outwardly and inwardly, not to ignore the external reality for the sake of the inner life, or the reverse, that’s quite a task.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God.

The triumphal-procession-air which, in our manners and customs, is given to marriage at the outset – that singing of Te Deum before the battle has begun.

Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.

This is precisely different from the childish but common religious notion that even when you are alone there is always Someone Else present

Yelling and screaming won’t really get what I want from my kids.

Wise people build their lives around what is eternal and squeeze in what is temporary. Not the other way around.

I have to be a calmer person, because my anger can look pretty terrifying to a young person.

The worst reaction someone can have is, “eh.”

Security wins many battles but loses the security war.