Spend more time building your character than trying to build your platform.

Don't condemn me, remember rather that sometimes I, too, can reach the bursting point.

Peter needs tenderness. For the first time in his life he's discovered a girl; for the first time he's seen that even the biggest pests also have an inner self and a heart, and are transformed as soon as they're alone with you.

It's better to be kind than to be right.

We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you.

If you want to change the way you feel about people, you have to change the way you treat them.

Imagining God can be so different from wishful thinking, if your spiritual experiences change your behavior over time. Have you become more generous, which is the ultimate healing? Or more patient, which is a close second? Did your world become bigger and juicier and more tender? Have you become ever so slightly kinder to yourself? This is how you tell.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit and our operating instructions, to be cooling breezes to sad or worried people, including ourselves, in this sometimes hot stuffy joint [the world].

When we try to see a damaged person as one of God's regular old customers, instead of a lost cause, it takes the pressure off everybody. We can then loosen our death grip on the person, which usually results in progress for everyone, also known in certain circles as grace.

Mercy means compassion, empathy, a heart for someone's troubles. It's not something you do — it is something in you, accessed, revealed, or cultivated through use, like a muscle. We find it in the most unlikely places, never where we first look.

My true religion is kindness. That is a great moral position - practicing kindness, keeping one's heart open in the presence of suffering.

The point was to lean toward goodness, to resist less, to pray for our enemies. The point was to have a spiritual awakening of any sort that would help us live more often in kind awareness.