I love looking at you, hundred-year-old tree, loaded with shoots and boughs as though you were a stripling. Teach me the secret of growing old like you, open to life, to youth, to dreams, as somebody aware that youth and age are merely steps towards eternity.
Hélder CâmaraGod accepts the risk of appearing to be unjust. God looks unjust, but he is not. He asks more from those to whom he gives more. They are not greater or better, they have greater responsibility. They must give more service. Live to serve.
Hélder CâmaraKeep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world.
Hélder CâmaraIf there is some corner of the world which has remained peaceful, but with a peace based on injustices the peace of a swamp with rotten matter fermenting in its depths - we may be sure that that peace is false. Violence attracts violence. Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt, either from the oppressed or from the young, determined to fight for a more just and more human world.
Hélder Câmara