“To deal with history [life] means to abandon one's self to chaos but to retain a belief in the ordination and the meaning. It is a very serious task.”

“So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.”

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.”

“The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.”

“To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive, and yet infinitely active also; passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood But it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature, as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside, to let God work.”

“Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For true disciples, however, it cannot mean hoarding or using kingdom assets self-indulgently.)”