Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

Our desire must be like a slow and stately ship, sailing across endless oceans, never in search of safe anchorage. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, it will find mooring for a moment.

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbour. Because I and my neighbour and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing each day, the love which is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live.

Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

Life is good, after all...and that's what stays with me, even now, even when I'm about to be packed off to Poland.