“Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.”

Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.

In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.

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.

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

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.

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death.

If I was dead, I wouldn’t know I was dead. That’s the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.

If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.

If Abu Bakr is dead and Umar is Caliph, then we hear and obey.

To heal is to be constantly reminded that once you learn to punch, you die with blood on your wrist.

You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.