The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest places, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion which led to the cross, then we can truly say, 'Now I have begun'.

Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only improvish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.

We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.

It wasn't until Castro marched triumphantly into Cuba that you might say the whole thing grew into a Marxist revolution.

I cannot worry much about your sins and miseries when I have so many of my own. I can only love you all, poor fellow travellers, fellow sufferers. I do not want to add one least straw to the burden you already carry.

Common sense in religion is rare, and we are too often trying to be heroic instead of just ordinarily good and kind.

No matter how corrupt the Church may become, it carries within it the seeds of its own regeneration.