“But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.”

“The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God”

“God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.”

“Do not desire chiefly to be cherished and consoled by God; desire above all to love Him.Do not anxiously desire to have others find consolation in God, but rather help them to love God.Do not seek consolation in talking about God, but speak of Him in order that He may be glorified.If you truly love Him, nothing can console you but His glory. And if you seek His glory before everything else, then you will also be humble enough to receive consolation from His hand: accepting it chiefly because, in showing His mercy to us, He is glorified in our souls.”

“Those who refuse His mercy satisfy His justice in another way. Without His mercy, they cannot love Him. Without love for Him they cannot be 'justified' or 'made just'. That is to say: they cannot conform to Him Who is love. Those who have not received His mercy are in a state of injustice with regard to Him. It is their own injustice that is condemned by His justice. And in what does their injustice consist? In the refusal of His mercy. We come, in the end, to this basic paradox: that we owe it to God to receive from Him the mercy that is offered to us in Christ, and that to refuse this mercy is the summation of our 'injustice'. Clearly, then, only the mercy of God can make us just, in this supernatural sense, since the primary demand of God's justice upon us is that we receive His mercy.”

“What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the men he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is.”

“Once the question of grace and free will is reduced to a juridical matter, once witnesses line up with plaintiff or defendant and the jurors strive to determine who is entitled to what, we are inevitably tempted to act as if everything that was given to free will was taken from grace and everything conceded to grace was withdrawn from our own liberty.On both sides of the debate, whether one is arguing "for grace" or whether one is a defender of "nature," it seems that everyone is more or less obsessed with this great illusion of ownership and possession. What is strictly mine? How much can God demand of me - how much can I demand of Him? Even if I come up with the answer that nothing is strictly mine at all, I have still falsified the perspective by asking a foolish question in the first place. "How much is mine?" Should such a question ever be asked? Should such a division ever be made at all? To ask such a question makes it almost impossible for me to grasp the paradox which is the only possible answer: That everything is mine precisely because everything is His. If it were not His, it could never be mine. If it could not be mine, He would not even want it for Himself. And all that is His is His very self. All that He gives me becomes, in some way, my own self. What, then is mine? He is mine. And what is His? I am His.”