Those who in everything make God first and last and best are the happiest people in the world.—My Life Today, p. 161.

it is good for a man to do right, and to leave happiness to take care of itself...

As natural as it may be to want to play on the winning team, the wish to secure divine favoritism strikes me as the worst possible reason to practice any religion. If the man who asked that question could not think of a dozen better reasons to be a Christian than that, then what, indeed, was he doing there?

I can begin to love the dried ink marks on the page more than I love the encounters that gave rise to them. If I am not careful, I can decide that I am really much happier reading my Bible than I am entering into what God is doing in my own time and place, since shutting the book to go outside will involve the very great risk of taking part in stories that are still taking shape.

The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction," wrote the fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart.

In my case, the attention deficit was all mine. I had moved to the country in order to lie down in more blessed fields, to live closer to the Divine Presence that had held me all my life, but I had once again become so busy caring for the household of God that I neglected the One who had called me there. If I still had plenty of energy for the work, that was because feeding others was still my food. As long as I fed them, I did not feel my hunger pains.

We can face whatever comes once we have relinquished our lives and the lives of our loved ones to Him. He is the God we can trust for strength each day. He is the One with all the love and understanding, who has a clear and eternal purpose for us.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

In God, there is no lack and no recession.

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

'Having it all,' to me, means having my family, having health, my kids' health, a roof over our heads, everybody fed.