For me to be a saint means to be myself.

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.

We do not pray for the sake of praying, but for the sake of being heard. We do not pray in order to listen to ourselves praying but in order that God may hear us and answer us. Also, we do not pray in order to receive just any answer: it must be God's answer.

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.

People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular- and too lazy to think of anything better.

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him.... The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him.

We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it.