As the car was turning around to start down the avenue John Paul turned around and waved, and it was only then that his expression showed some possibility that he might be realizing, as I did, that we would never see each other on earth again.

The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear into the background of ordinary everyday routine.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender oneself to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. It destroys one's own capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of one's own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes the work fruitful.

When it comes to the nitty-gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God's love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it as a reality that humbles us even as it gives cause for praise. The rhythm of sunrise and sunset marks a passage of time that marks each day rich with the possibility of salvation.

In our culture, time can seem like an enemy....But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used up by it.....Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness, rather than always pushing to get the job done

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.

The Future… something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four.

Time and tides wait for none

Life never stops, child. Even when it's noisy, unpleasant, painful, it's still the sound of duty, of love, of family, of laws older than time that help us to ultimately find contentment- to be happy. It's the sound of our universe. It's the sound of purpose.

A lifetime of happiness? No man could bear it: it would be hell on earth.