To accept the invitation . . . is to be taken into Christ’s living Body, finding there a company of unlikely people who have received and answered the same invitation.
—Rowan Wiilliams

We are all of us from birth to death guests at a table which we did not spread. The sun, the Earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet. . . . Shall we think of the day as a chance to come nearer to our Host, and to find out something of him who has fed us so long?
—Rebecca Harding Davis

Holiness is not the accumulation of virtues. Holiness is being possessed by God.
—Father John Riccardo

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
—Winston Churchill

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
—Psalm 118:22-24

Things may not be logical or fair, but when God is directing the events of our lives, they are right.
—Luci Swindel

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
—Joan Didion

You need only to look at the vine to be reminded of your own nature. . . . Each of us has been grafted onto the church by faith the Lord calls branches, and he urges us to bear much fruit.
—Saint Basil the Great

Our sins are nothing but a grain of sand alongside the great mountain of the mercy of God.
—Saint John Vianney

How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy?
—Isaac Bashevis Singer

Mercy is the fulfillment of justice, not its abolition.
—Thomas Aquinas

The true, the only perfection is not to embrace such and such a way of life; it is to do God’s will. It is to lead the kind of life God wants . . . .
—Charles de Foucauld

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence . . . . God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
—Bede Griffiths

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.
—George Herbert

If, then, you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because he himself is the way.
—Thomas Aquinas

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that love is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound, the less it is blind.
—G.K. Chesterton

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
—Roald Dahl

Because we are made in God’s image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves.
—Kathleen Norris

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
—Albert Schweitzer

Everything must be done or not done, changed or not changed on account of charity. Charity is the principle by which and the end toward which everything must be guided. There can be no sin in what is accomplished, in all truth, for it, and according to its spirit.
—Isaac, Cistercian abbot of l’Etoile

Being friends . . . love, these open the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored.
—Vincent van Gogh 

There can only be two basic loves . . . the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.
—Saint Augustine of Hippo

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.
—Henri Frederick Amiel

Be a light wherever you stand and whenever you stand. . . . Be an example of truth, kindness, and justice. Be a reflection of the Savior.
—Justin Steckbauer

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
—Cynthia Ozick

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a . . . single power, a single salvation, and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.
—Hermann Hesse

God is not very concerned with the method by which rulers come to power; he is passionately and compassionately concerned with what they do once they attain power.
—N. T. Wright

That is our vocation: to convert . . . the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced. 
—Henri J. M. Nouwen

We are the other of the other.
—Marcus Aurelius

The foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
—Italo Calvino

Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.
—Brennan Manning

Faith is not a privilege to be claimed, but a gift to be shared.
—Pope Francis

What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don’t follow in his footsteps?
—Anonymous