In today's society, looking good and feeling good often trumps doing good and being good. And some people don't know the difference anymore.

All outward actions are worthless while our hearts be not right with God.

The true goal for man is to be what he does. The worth of a religion is the worth of the individuals living it. A mitsvah, therefore, is not mere doing but an act that embraces both the doer and the deed. The means may be external, but the end is personal. Your deeds be pure, so that ye shall be holy. A hero is he who is greater than his feats, and a pious man is he who is greater than his rituals. The deed is definite, yet the task is infinite.

The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he made so many of them.

The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.

You can sing all you want about how you love Jesus, you can have crocodile tears in your eyes, but the consecration that doesn't reach your purse has not reached your heart.

As Proust once said, classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination.

What is so frightening is the extent to which we may idealize others when we have such trouble tolerating ourselves

It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided.

A picture's beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

God is more concerned with our character than with our achievements. Achievements have importance only in the realm of time. Character is eternal. It determines what we will be through eternity.

While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction.