This is the Easter message, that awakening is possible, to the goodness of God, the sacredness of human life, the sisterhood and brotherhood of all.
—Anne Lamott
 
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are an Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
–Pope John Paul II
 

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
—Saint Augustine (354-430)

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , S.J.

As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us . . . . we will remain addicted to putting people and things in their “right” place.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen

From the end, spring new beginnings.
–Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.)

Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.
—Saint Jerome
 
The overall purpose of human communication is―or should be―reconciliation.
–M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum

Jesus . . . was making his way to the heights of the Cross, to the moment of self-giving love. The ultimate goal of his pilgrimage was the heights of God himself; to those heights he wanted to lift every human being.
—Pope Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday homily
 
Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, “Sir, you did not give us enough information.” I would add to that, “All the same, Sir, I’m not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end . . . we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.
—Thomas Merton
 
As the gospels present it . . . the mission of Jesus of Nazareth is about the way in which . . . God’s people—historically, the Jewish people who had first received the law and the covenant—are being re-created in relation to Jesus himself.
–Former Abp. of Canterbury Rowan Williams
 

Let works of piety . . . be our delight, and let us be filled with those kinds of food which feed us for eternity.
—Pope Leo the Great (d. 461)
 
I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.
–Antonio Porchia (1885-1968), Voces

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
—Abraham Lincoln

Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.
–Ansel Adams

The most basic meaning of vocation . . . . is a call to seek the face of God, a call to holiness and the fullness of life itself.
—Father Donald Senior, C.P.
 
All of us, though, are called upon to have courage, to take risks, to be heroes in the pursuit of our own callings, however humble they may be.
–John Neafsey, A Sacred Voice Is Calling (Orbis Books, ©2006)
 

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.
—Plato

The work of any believer is not only the work of a human individual, but is actually the work of the Holy Spirit.
–The late Coptic Pope Shenouda III