What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.

The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.

The sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.

The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.