Great Throughts Treasury

"Repentance is… not only a realization of failure, not only a burst of contrition for having failed the good, not only a readiness to admit this failure freely… but also a determination not to fail the good again."

"Hate is a prolonged form of suicide. "

"If my prayer is real, my surface self, my ego, my persona, must decrease and he must increase in me. I dare not stay as I am and come near to such a love as his. I could not bear it. The many hucksters in me–the mean, demanding deceivers–are put to confusion by such a love."

"Prayer is a threat to the continued enthronement of our egocentric goals. There is a massive resistance in us to continued prayer. That is why we stop praying, which is natural. It is also why we must ever begin again and again which is supernatural, of God, and meant to be an instrument of our redemption."

"If we dare to stay in this chamber–aware of our shortcomings in the Light of God’s loving presence–both the revelation of what must be put right and the strength to put it right are given to us."

"There are few who will . . . accept the forgiveness of God. . . . They are always reopening the vault where they have deposited their sin, and are forever asking to have it back in order to fondle it; reconstruct, query, or worry over it; wear it inwardly."