“Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.”

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.

Your heart is greater than your wounds.

What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.

Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.

Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you’d rather not go.

You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.

The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.

Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer – listening to the voice of the one who calls you “the beloved.”

Our life is a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.

Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you, too.”

I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions.

Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory.

No battle is ever won … victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.