The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes.

Everything depends on inner change; when this has taken place, then, and only then does the world change.

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.

The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

If we had the power over the ends of the earth, it would not give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet devoted relationship to nearby life can give us.

But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. . . . Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.

For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it