Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.

Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.

Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.

In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

The world says, The more you take, the more you have. Christ says, the more you give, the more you are.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

Who told you that your journey was a thousand miles

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.

Remember you live in a community. You have a responsibility to be accountable to your family and your community as well as yourself.

Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

I think living in a new country gives you a certain bravery that you don't have when you live in your own country - because of the freedom it gives you.

When you're in the back of the pack, you can gamble a little bit more.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

Envy bestrides praise.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom. I mark only the happy hours, like the sundial, because otherwise I would have gone nuts.