Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity.

The lights of prayer that make us imagine we are beginning to be angels are sometimes only signs that we are finally beginning to be men. We do not have a high enough opinion of our own nature. We think we are at the gates of heaven and we are only just beginning to come into our own realm as free and intelligent beings.

To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God.

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.