We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

Time becomes a means to an end, not moments in which to enjoy God or pay attention to others.

Learning how to die has something to do with living each day in full awareness that we are children of God, whose love is stronger than death.

Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death, as a school in the art of dying. I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift.

Then occupation is called a blessing and emptiness a curse. Many telephone conversations start with the words: "I know you are busy, but …" and we would confuse the speaker and even harm our reputation were we to say, "Oh no, I am completely free, today, tomorrow and the whole week." Our client might well lose interest in a man who has so little to do.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

We live a short period of time in this world, but we live it according to the laws of eternal life.

for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly;

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

It matters not where or how far you travel,--the farther commonly the worse,--but how much alive you are.