quotes from classic

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

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Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

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The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

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Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.

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The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

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By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

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We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

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If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.

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The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

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In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

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The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

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Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

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October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

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Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

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Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.

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Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.

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The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

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Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

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Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.

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Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.

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