Quotes about Spirituality

You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.

Prayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives.

God makes it easy to begin: just do it! God also makes it easy to progress in prayer, for he rewards our efforts with peace and joy. And he makes it easiest of all at the end, for it gradually becomes more natural and delightful.

But that is all prayer requires: faith, hope, and love. Great holiness, or piety, or sanctity are not required. Prayer is a road to holiness.

St. Thomas would have agreed with Leon Bloy, who often wrote that in the end there is only one tragedy in life: not to have been a saint.

The more consciously and freely we choose an evil, the more responsible we are for it and the more guilty we are of it; this is why spiritual sins like pride are greater in guilt than carnal sins.

There are only two persons you can never, ever escape, not for one moment, either in time or in eternity: God and yourself.

The practice of the presence of God, though we begin it at special times of prayer, is designed to spill out and over and into all times.

when the soul no longer conforms to the will of God, the body no longer conforms to the will of the soul.

We pray, not simply as some solitary self-improvement program, but because we have been addressed by God. Prayer is a response to a prior divine invitation.

Psychology can make us feel good, but religion can make us be good.

The contemplative life not only does not exclude, but requires, the active life.