Both total accommodation to the culture and total resistance to it are usually signs of intellectual sickness.

God is a placebo for your own mortality.

We are exceptionally good at seeing the faults in others and exceptionally adept at ignoring the faults in ourselves.

Your faith will grow only in the measure that you give it away.

Love without truth devolves into sentimentality. Truth without love becomes cold and calculated.

Again, I hear almost everyday from atheists who write off religion as primitive, premodern nonsense. I summon Aquinas, Augustine, Paul [of Tarsus], Teresa of Avila, Joseph Ratzinger, and Edith Stein-in all their intellectual rigor-as allies in the the struggle against this dismissive atheism.

The long nights that Pier Giorgio Frassati spent on his knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament had something to do with the long days spent in service of the poor.