Great Throughts Treasury

"God is in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?"

"God is always there. He never leaves our prayers unanswered."

"God is the friend of silence. See how nature -- trees, flowers, grass -- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. . . . We need silence to be able to touch souls."

"God loves people and provides for them. They are more important to Him than the lilies of the field and the sparrows."

"God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be: oneness with God."

"God will find another person, more humble, more devoted, more obedient to him, and the society will go on...on retirement."

"Happiness can't be found without prayer."

"God wants our will and our desire to be for him, for our family, for our children, for our brethren, and for the poor."

"God wants to show his greatness by using nothingness."

"He taught us to learn from Him, to be meek and humble of heart. If we are meek and humble, we will love each other as He loves us."

"He who is faultless does not care for the opinion of others."

"Holiness consists of doing the will of God with a smile."

"Holiness is not the luxury of the few; it is a simply duty, for you and for me, because Jesus has very clearly stated, "Be ye holy as my father in heaven is holy." So let us pray for each other that we grow in love for each other, and through this love become holy as Jesus wants us to be for he died out of love for us."

"He has told us that He is the hungry one. He is the naked one. He is the thirsty one. He is the one without a home. He is the one who is suffering. These are our treasures, she said, looking at the rows of pallets in the caravanserai. They are Jesus."

"Holiness is the greatest gift that God can give us because for that reason He created us."

"How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers."

"How can you love God whom you do not see, if you don't love the neighbor whom you do see - the neighbor you know and live with every day?"

"How can we love God and His poor, if we do not love each other with whom we live?"

"How poor we would be if God had not given us the power of giving ourselves to Him; how rich we are now!"

"Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him?"

"I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence?we need to listen to God because it's not what we say but what He says to us and through us that matters."

"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world."

"Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal."

"I am like a little pencil in God's hand. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it."

"I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more."

"I believe in person to person. Every? person is the one person in the world at that moment."

"I am for God and God for me. I live for God and give up my own self, and in this way God lives for me."

"I believe that God has created each soul, that that soul belongs to God, and that each soul has to find God in its own lifetime and enter into His life. That is what is important. All of us need to seek God and find Him."

"I believe we must look for holiness, joy, and love in our own homes."

"I do not agree with a big way of doing things. What matters is the individual. If we wait till we get numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person."

"I do not know anything about Charles Keating's work or his business or the matters you are dealing with. I only know he has been kind and generous to God's poor, and always ready to help whenever there was a need... Whenever someone asks me to speak to a judge, I always tell them to pray, to look into [their] heart, and to do what Jesus would do in that circumstance. And this is what I am asking of you, your Honor."

"I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive it (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

"I don't know what to say since I don't know what is happening [in Albania]. I can say only one thing. My Albanian people are always in my heart. I pray very much to our Lord that His peace may come to our hearts, in our families and in all the world. I pray for Albania, that the Lord may help its leaders to see clearly because if they want to live in peace, they should love one another."

"I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness."

"I fear just one thing : Money!"

"I don't think there is anyone who needs God's help and grace as much as I do. Sometimes I feel so helpless and weak. I think that is why God uses me. Because I cannot depend on my own strength, I rely on him 24 hours a day."

"I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is 'Abortion', because it is a war against the child... A direct killing of the innocent child, 'Murder' by the mother herself... And if we can accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love... And we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts..."

"I go of my free choice, with the blessing of obedience."

"I find the rich much poorer--sometimes they are more lonely inside."

"I hope that what you give me comes not from your surplus but it is the fruit of a sacrifice made for the love of God. You must give what costs you, go without something you like, then you will truly be brothers to the poor who are deprived of even the things they need."

"I have never been in a war before, but I have seen famine and death. I was asking (myself) what do they feel when they do this? I don't understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do it. I don't understand. [Beirut, 1982]"

"I just take one day. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. We have only today.."

"I must be willing to give whatever it takes to do good to others. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me."

"I must not attempt to control God's actions; I must not count the stages in the journey He would have me make. I ask Him to make a saint of me, yet I must leave to Him the choice of that saintliness itself and still more the choice of the means which lead to it."

"I never will understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish."

"I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ?My son did this to me.? I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ?I forgive my son.? Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand."

"I praise the tenderness and the love of God, because every little one, in a poor family or a rich family, is a child of God, created by the Creator of all things."

"I perceive the infinite greatness that we can tap into. I see how he can work through us. Because you and I have nothing on our own we need him. As the Bible says, God waits and looks. Will we respond?"

"I never look at the masses as my responsibility; I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time - just one, one, one. So you begin. I began - I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand....The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin - one, one, one."

"I pray for you that the Holy Spirit may fill you with His purity. I ask the Holy Spirit to free you of all impurity--body, soul, mind, will, and heart-- that each one of you become the living tabernacle of God Most High, and so become a carrier of God's love and compassion."