If we seek paradise outside ourselves, we cannot have paradise in our hearts.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?

Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.

Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.

Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all others.

Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.