Grace carried me here, and by Grace I’ll carry on.

Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.

God not only chooses us for himself — he also chooses us to do his good works on earth. The amazing thing is that, throughout scripture and history, it seems that God has chosen the most unlikely and unqualified people to fulfill his plan and purpose on the earth. Most often, the response of those people has been to insist on their own unworthiness. And if they don’t — the people around them may do so, loudly and shrilly. And therein lies a danger: If we allow other people to tell us what we are and are not qualified to do, we will limit what God wants to do with us. We may never get to those who need our help.

Man is not important for his ego and personality. He is important because as a soul he is a part of God.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

Don’t settle because you’re afraid you won’t find something better. Don’t compromise because you don’t want to be alone. Give your perfect life, lover and job time and space to grow into our life.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness—life’s painful aspect—softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose—you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

I respect more the person who struggles with his faith than the person who is confident in his skepticism.

Your mind works very simply: you are either trying to find out what are God’s laws in order to follow them; or you are trying to outsmart Him.