Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.

True religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the heart of men.

The smell of death was thick in the city of Vara?asi. And in Tokyo as well. And yet the birds blissfully sang their songs.

I became a Catholic against my will.

Christianity, to be effective in Japan, must change.

Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.

Every weakness contains within itself a strength.