Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church; it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history.

The most powerful moral influence is example.

If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.

I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.

All -isms end up in schisms.

We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.

God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.

The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.

At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.

Beware of the differences that blind us to the unity that binds us.

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.

A choice to listen to the chaos your mind creates or the whispers of intuitive wisdom from the heart.

You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.

You're not under attack when others gain rights and privileges you've always had.

I felt less like Cinderella and more like used drywall. Perpetually screwed.

If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.

Our life is all grounded and rooted in love, and without love we may not live.

But I'd rather look like you than be pretty," she told Anne sincerely. Anne laughed, sipped honey from the tribute, and cast away the sting.

I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.

An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.

I did not know that my entire personality, my entire being, could be discarded as the byproduct of my anatomy. What if I really am just someone with a large prefrontal cortex...and nothing more?