QUOTATION: Focusing on God

If we don’t think about God, everything ends up being about 'me' and my own comfort.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Discouragement

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own power. Your self-sufficiency, your selfishness and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that.

– Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

QUOTATION: The Natural Self

The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right. It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Bad People

[B]ad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Love and Suffering

When we know that the way of love–this exodus, this going out of oneself–is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, 2002