Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

The best way to know God is to love many things.

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

I just think that it’s strong and it’s important that we recognize what the Christmas season is about; it’s about the birth of our Savior, and there’s a lot of pressure today to be politically correct, but people are realizing, too, that you have to be open to express your faith what you want believe.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

Everything is subject to change except God Himself.

The fewer the words, the better the prayer.

When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‚You’re no good,‘ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No! You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Vanity, showing off, is an attitude that reduces spirituality to a worldly thing, which is the worst sin that could be committed in the church.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

The citizens of Tumortown are forever assailed with cures and rumors of cures.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline.

Prayer is a strong wall and fortress of the church; it is a goodly Christian weapon.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

If you’re in a workplace you don’t like right now, be encouraged because God will use it for your good. Think about it this way: He wants you to be a light in the darkness – and He’s putting His confidence in you!

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I’m teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‚security,‘ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists – they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

An operatic voice is like no other.

I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.

When Jesus comes to live in our hearts, the seed of holiness is planted.

Death surrenders us totally to God: it makes us enter into him; we must, in return, surrender ourselves to death with absolute love and self-abandonment since, when death comes, all we can do is to surrender ourselves completely to the domination and guidance of God.

If you’re not careful to think and speak words of faith, worry will creep in, and it will not only steal your peace and joy, it will steal your ‚today.‘ The present is the greatest gift God ever gives us. So hold on to the peace that’s yours in Christ. Don’t let it go.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

God is everywhere.

I have been singing randomly, obsessively, obnoxiously for as long as I can remember.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

Make sure of your commitment to Jesus Christ, and seek to follow Him every day. Don’t be swayed by the false values and goals of this world, but put Christ and His will first in everything you do.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

The roaring thunder of the law and the fear of the terror of judgment are both used to bring us to Christ, but the final victory culminating in our salvation is won through God’s loving-kindness.

The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.