I knew that no matter what door you knock on in a Cretan village, it will be opened for you. A meal will be served in your honor, and you will sleep between the best sheets in the house. In Crete, the stranger is still the unknown god. Before him, all doors and all hearts are opened.

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my dreams and my travels; very few men, living or dead, have helped me in my struggle.

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humour, and others, I'm told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men.

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

That part of Christ's nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own. If he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to unfasten your belt and look for a fight.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realise - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.

A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.

All my life, I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.