Too many times we insist on loving people the way we want to love them instead of the way they need to be loved.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.

Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

Our choices determine our destiny

There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.

The less the difference, the greater the quarrel over it.

There's a lot that's not explained about the universe. And psychic-ness is not stranger than that.

The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.

Lack of conditioning will make a coward of us all.

Physically, I was always moving. I was always a little jittery.

But who are you?" Percy—" I started to say. Then the skeletons turned around. "Gotta go!" What kind of name is Percy Gotta-go?

We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils.