In the school of the spirit, man learns wisdom through humility.

Every one should find some suitable time, day or night, to sink into his depths, each according to his own fashion. Not every one is able to engage in contemplative prayer.

As a good wine must be kept in a good cask, so a wholesome body is the proper foundation for a well-appointed inner ground.

A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises.

In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen!

Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.

The gracious, eternal God permits the spirit to green and bloom and to bring forth the most marvelous fruit, surpassing anything a tongue can express and a heart conceive.

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

God does not lead all His servants by one road, nor in one way, nor at one time; for God is in all things; and that man is not serving God aright, who can only serve Him in his own self-chosen way.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.

Everything depends on this: a fathomless sinking into a fathomless nothingness.

Let your only graduation be in the grave.

A library — a place full of books! Imagine!" Ivy couldn't imagine a place closer to heaven. Think of all the books you could read!

The stomach is a slave that must accept everything that is given to it, but which avenges wrongs as slyly as does the slave.

Peter." The fine hair along her spine rising, Vicky could feel the power in a name. This is who you are, it said. Come back to us.

I am not surprised by any situation.

I've often played very strong, flashy, kind of inadvertently mean women. I am not that way in my real life.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius

I think you really have to tap into your sense of humor in order to survive.

When you're tired, you rationalize. You make excuses in your mind. You say, "I'm too tired; I'm bushed; I can't do this; I'll loaf." Then you're a coward.

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.