If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.

People even lose their vocations because they find out that a man can spend forty or fifty or sixty years in a monastery and still have a bad temper.

Discipline is most important, and without it no serious meditation will ever be possible. But it should be one's own discipline, not a routine mechanically imposed from the outside.

The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows, not by clarity and substance but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.

A fear of the unknown keeps a lot of people from leaving bad situations.

To me, Herod symbolizes the terrible destruction that fearful people can leave in their wake if their fear is unacknowledged, if they have power but can only use it in furtive, pathetic, and futile attempts at self-preservation.

Greatness is never achieved nor dreams realized apart from great discipline.

I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done.

Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

Live with power and energy that undeniably transcends their natural capacities and with an intensity of commitment that far exceeds anything they have previously demonstrated in their lives

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them," wrote Margaret Atwood.

Carme told them she couldn't remember what she felt, but she realized it's hard to die, and to invite death is cowardice.