“This does not necessarily mean that the man whose path at this moment crosses mine will be personally endowed with each and all of the marvellous qualities which we are accustomed to attribute to our representations of God, that he will be a perfect image of the divine Majesty, a striking sign of the Presence. But then, what about ourselves, as we look doubtfully at this man? Do we ourselves perfectly mirror the Lord in our bodies, our hearts and minds, our behaviour? What matters in our meeting is not the quality of the image that he and I present of God, still less any reflections upon this quality, but precisely the setting free of that image in his depths as in mine”

“We attribute to ourselves qualities that we do not possess because if we possessed them, our lives would exactly mirror our image of ourselves. Our lies about what is really happening in our lives are what we use to "patch up" our ego with rationalizations and justifications, all of which conceal from us the fact that we cannot really do anything because we have no Being.”

“Behaviour is the mirror in which we can display our image.”

“We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.”

“The most important therapeutic capacity is the ability to be present with an open heart and to be grounded in our inner being,in our essence and authentic self, in the meditative quality within, through which we can meet another person. It is to meet that which is already perfect within a person.”

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”