“We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.”

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.

The best thing to do is find one person in your life and try to love them unconditionally. If you’ve accomplished that, you’ve accomplished a lot.

Nothing has ever been accomplished in any walk of life without enthusiasm, without motivation, and without perseverance.

Everything you’ve done may be undone for you to accomplish much more.

I want to follow my dreams. I want to make sure that I put myself first and accomplish what I need to accomplish.

Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet.

Being old didn’t seem like an accomplishment. Everyone I knew who was old was like sick or broke. It just didn’t look appealing until I moved to L.A. and started interacting with people who were 50+ and still kicking it, having money, living large.

Before she was a King, my mother was a peace advocate, a courageous leader, and an accomplished artist.