I feel called to help individuals, to love each human being. I never think in terms of crowds in general but in terms of persons. Were I to think about crowds, I would never begin anything.

As Christians, we have an additional reason to love and serve the poor; for in them we see the face and the flesh of Christ, who made himself poor so to enrich us with his poverty.

The poor are our brothers and sisters ... people in the world who need love, who need care, who have to be wanted.

The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.

It is true that in a world of high consumption, where anything and everything is possible, nothing is so humanizing as love, and a conscious interest in the life of others, particularly in the life of the oppressed. For love leaves us open to wounding and disappointment.

I believe, as followers of Christ, we are commanded to reach out to the least of these in the name of Jesus and show them they matter a great deal to God, who sacrificed His only Son to reach them with His love.

I think that whether someone is a Christian or not, the idea that a human life has dignity and intrinsic worth should be clear enough.

the One who touched lepers and dead bodies wasn't afraid of getting His holy hands dirty with the problems of this fallen world.

When being is divorced from doing, pious thoughts become an adequate substitute for washing dirty feet.

Jesus expected the most of every man and woman; and behind their grumpiest poses, their most puzzling defense mechanisms, their coarseness, their arrogance, their dignified airs, their silence, and their sneers and curses, Jesus sees a little child who wasn't loved enough—a least of these who had ceased growing because someone had ceased believing in them.

We are not pro-life simply because we are warding off death. We are pro-life to the extent that we are men and women for others, all others; to the extent that no human flesh is a stranger to us; to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love, to the extent that for us there are no "others.

For the Christian one dislocating, self-impoverishing hour spent with a child living in a broken-down dump is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the enfeebled good intentions, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of those Christians who are so busy cultivating their own holiness that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the slum.