It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.

How do we listen to his voice? With the ear of our heart. With love. Love has ears, as love has eyes. Just be there, and love him, and let him love you.” (35). Easier...

Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts.

Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to...

The fires of hell may be made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God’s truth, hated and fled from in vain by those...

Conscience is thus explained only as the voice of God in the soul.

Three reasons God commands us to pray correlate to our three deepest needs, the fundamental needs of the three powers of our soul: prayer gives truth to our mind, goodness to our will, and beauty...

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.

We must pray in order to grow, and we must grow because Infinite Love will not, cannot, settle for less than the greatest joy of which his beloved creature is capable.

If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings,...

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting.

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.

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.

Léon Bloy wrote: ‘Life holds only one tragedy: not to have been a saint

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That’s not fundamentalism, that’s the...

Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two...

If one Egyptian tailor hadn’t cheated on the threads of Joseph’s mantle, Potiphar’s wife would never have been able to tear it, present it as evidence to Potiphar that Joseph attacked her, gotten him thrown...

When I say “The good man gave his good dog a good meal,” I use “good” analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good...

Trusting God’s grace means trusting God’s love for us rather than our love for God. […] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God’s love for us rather than trying to...

City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of...

God really performs the miracle of multiplying our time, but only if we give it to him first.

The single most important piece of advice about prayer is one word: Begin!

The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man’s head because she turns...

Reading a book about something can be an obstacle to doing it because it gives you the impression that you are doing what you are only thinking about doing. It is tempting to remain in...

Pilate’s skeptical sneer “What is truth?” was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world’s stupidest question was three words; God’s profoundest answer was one Word.

Love gives you eyes.

I guarantee you that after you die you will not say ‘I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.

Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.

Nothing but prayer can make saints because nothing but God can make saints, and we meet God in prayer. Prayer is the hospital for souls where we meet Doctor God.

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.

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces “nice” people, not...

We try too much and trust too little. Count the times God’s Book tells us to “try.” Now count the times it tells us to “trust.

It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.

It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else.

One moment of prayer, of weak worship, confused contrition, tepid thanksgiving, or pitiful petition will bring us closer to God than all the books of theology in the world.

An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer’s tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic – probably more....