The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.

I have a body and I have a soul. And my body belongs to the faith - in fact, the church - into which it was born, the Methodist Church.

Built into human makeup is a longing for a 'more' that the world of everyday experience cannot requite.

'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.

Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.

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.