“Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.”

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.

I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.

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.

Progress is impossible without change.

When Americans lend a hand to one another, nothing is impossible.

If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Impossible means that you haven’t found a solution yet.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

To make it hard, to make it difficult almost impossible for people to cast a vote is not in keeping with the democratic process.