“The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.”

“I wish to point out that there was another sphere of intellectual activity in which the Hindus excelled–the meditative and transcendent–and that here we might learn from them some lessons of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ignore or to despise.”

“We who scream exist ecstatically. We stand out beyond ourselves, we exist in two dimensions. The scream implies a tension between that which exists and that which might conceivably exist, between the indicative (that which is) and the subjunctive (that which might be).”

“If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.”

“There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted as we at present are, and are for the future to be. But then, in return, we are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this pardon with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least, wherein we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the ills we have committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us to offend her;”

“A gay temper is like a bright day; true, it may have its faults — a little petulance, a little wilfulness — the flush may be too ready in the cheek, and the flash too prompt in the eye; still these are only trifles to be pardoned, and we like that all the better in which we have something to forgive.”

“When we resort to violence ... we lose sight of why we are in the world and even end up committing senseless acts of cruelty. We see this in the folly of war, where Christ is crucified yet another time.”

“We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.”

“It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.”

“If we continue to pardon or excuse the wrongdoers who commit acts of criminality in unsettling an elected government, we don't have any guarantee, do we, that this kind of exercise won't be repeated in the future.”