“A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural ...”

“The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”

“We are not trying to manipulate God and tell Him what to do. Rather, we are asking Him to tell us what to do.”

“Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.”

“The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.”

“Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas sta...”

“The main danger is that of supposing that the thing to do is get a mind on the scale of Thomas (Aquinas)s into your head, a task of compression that will be achieved only at your heads peril. The o...”

“It is commonly said to my little friend Legion: Read the great writers for style. But I say to him: Read the great dead masters for ideas. Devour them, Fletcherize them, digest, assimilate, make th...”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”

“I have little use for religion as it is practiced, or for astrology, or for belief in witchcraft or omens of good or ill-luck. I think they all stem from some insufficiency in mens minds, perhaps f...”

“It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.”

“So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in - at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives deligh...”