Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.

When I became a novice monk, I lived in a temple where the atmosphere was quite like in a family. The abbot is like a father and other monks are like your big brothers, your small, younger brothers. It is a kind of family.

A woman will doubt everything you say except it be compliments to herself.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

One of the things I’ve told men over and over and over and over is if you’re being rejected by all the women that you approach, it’s not the women!

I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.

I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t.

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.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

My friends are my estate.

I’m a human being and I fall in love and sometimes I don’t have control of every situation.

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

I was never a boy magnet at school. There was always the girl all the guys liked and wanted to date, but it was never me.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

If a man’s character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.

I’ve… been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with. Maybe I have, maybe I ain’t. I never tell if I have.

I always wanted to be loved.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

There is just no comparison between having a dinner date with a man and staying home playing canasta with the girls.

I rely on other people every day of my life.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

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 want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Anyone who is to find Christ must first find the church. How could anyone know where Christ is and what faith is in him unless he knew where his believers are?

She’s been married so many times she has rice marks on her face.

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it’s almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

I had a lovers quarrel with the world.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

You know what, I’m very attracted to someone who makes me laugh and is that charming. Really, I could be charmed by anyone. I’m just a sucker for somebody that is charming.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.