“The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.

I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.

Weaknesses and deficiencies play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.

Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him who loves us, who is near to us.

It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.

Our real journey in life is interior.

What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.

Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live.

As my Russian improves, I become increasingly conscious of just what sort of a society I live in.

This is your life – you must die by yourself, so for heaven’s sake, live for yourself and no one else.

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.

Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.

As we know, our own mother bore us only into pain and dying. But our true mother, Jesus, who is all love, bears us into joy and endless living. Blessed may he be.

A soul cannot live without loving. It must have something to love, for it was created to love.

Dying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.

No matter what happens, I’m loud, noisy, earthy and ready for much more living.