Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the one thing necessary may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.

the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leaves the rest aside. He

The real purpose of meditation is this: to teach a man how to work himself free of created things and temporal concerns, in which he finds only confusion and sorrow, and enter into a conscious and loving contact with God in which he is disposed to receive from God the help he knows he needs so badly, and to pay to God the praise and honor and thanksgiving and love which it has now become his joy to give.

As soon as one is conscious of the presence of the Master, one must, in all passivity, abandon the work to Him.

To praise the contemplative life is not to reject every other form of life, but to seek a solid foundation for every other human striving. Without

The perfection of twelfth-century Cistercian architecture is not to be explained by saying that the Cistercians were looking for a new technique. I am not sure that they were looking for a new technique at all. They built good churches because they were looking for God. And they were looking for God in a way that was pure and integral enough to make everything they did and everything they touched give glory to God.

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.

One reason why we are less fervent than we ought to be is that we cripple our own spirit by taking ourselves too seriously. We expect too much from ourselves when we ought to expect everything from God on Whom we utterly depend.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender oneself to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. It destroys one's own capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of one's own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes the work fruitful.

Being totally committed to Jesus and living to give. If you are not living to give, then you are living for yourself and cutting off the flow of God. Living to give will bring you into the place of living from your giving. Giving

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.