A language that takes our emotions seriously and gives them real weight in our lives encourages us to think and be and act differently.

To take sides with life and experience how we can transcend ourselves is a process that has many names and faces. Religion is one of those names.

Every acceptance of suffering is an acceptance of that which exists. The denial of every form of suffering can result in a flight from reality in which contact with reality becomes ever thinner, ever more fragmentary. It is impossible to remove oneself totally from suffering, unless one removes oneself from life itself, no longer enters into relationships, makes oneself invulnerable.

toleration of exploitation, oppression, and injustice points to a condition lying like a pall over the whole of society; it is apathy, an unconcern that is incapable of suffering.

For me as a woman pride is not really sin, but rather something that I still have to learn. The male conception of the person who rebels against God by affirming himself, by acting proudly, arrogantly, and without constraints, is not a woman's concern. Rather, we women are in danger of not developing any pride, of never becoming independent, of constantly remaining within too narrow boundaries.

Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve.

The more people anticipate the elimination of suffering the less strength they have actually to oppose it. Whoever deals with his personal suffering only in the way our society has taught him - through illusion, minimization, suppression, apathy - will deal with societal suffering in the same way.