Sometimes it is a great joy just to listen to someone we love talking.

Sometimes it is a great joy just to listen to someone we love talking.

Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them.

As the wedded pair have given each other power over their bodies, it would be a grave sin for one to refuse either altogether or for a considerable time the fulfilment of the marriage debt.

As you are not yet married, and as marriage is the fundamental state of life as well as the unity of the commonwealth, make up your mind whether you are called to this state. If you make up your mind to marry, do not marry merely a good wife: marry a good mother to your children.

Certain gifts God makes to the human soul without its asking or desiring; but there are other gifts which the grown-up soul, with the use of reason, can only have by its desire.

How different would this country be if few were engaged in making money and many in making things.

It is no more irrational for the mind to take the word of the Eternal Word than for the eye to use light and for the ear to welcome sound.

It is somewhat surprising that collections of the 'hundred best books,' which usually begin with the Bible and generally include Marcus Aurelius, should give no place to the Acts of the General Councils, though mere literary works have done little beyond filling vacant hours, and these Acts have renewed the face of the earth.

Marriage is an indissoluble state of life wherein a man and a woman agree to give each other power over their bodies for the begetting, birth, and upbringing of offspring.

Most humbly, my beloved Saviour, I bow myself before thee. I am a worm and no man. I alone deserve to suffer. I alone shrink from suffering. I was with thee in thy days of joy, singing 'Hosanna,' and I wished to make thee King. Now, in thine hour of suffering, I am far from thee.

No sin, especially no great sin, is just a harm done to the individual who commits it. I believe myself that the future of the human race is bound up with that idea. The soul that is conscious of a grievous sin is conscious of a great harm done to the community - to someone else. That common hurt should now be forgiven.

Of a truth, there is an inward, formless, inarticulate, almost unconscious, prayer, the very breath of love, whereby the soul is knit fast to the God whom it has tracked, amidst the tangled underwood of human life, to his covert on the eternal hills.

One of the essential and most valid objections against the act of faith is that it is irrational, inasmuch as it offends against the syllogistic rule that the conclusion of an argument shall contain nothing more than the premises.

Ordinary Catholics are praying when they do not think they are. They are praying when they offer implicitly all they are doing to God.

Perhaps no General Council has been more naturally fitted than the Vatican Council to produce a masterpiece of religious thought and literature. No assembly of men since the time of Christ has ever been so representative of Christian and national thought.

Quit Babylon for love of the Babylonians.And do not seek ease or security you can obtain by using Babylon. What will it avail you to cease living in Babylon if you do not also cease living on Babylon?

St. Thomas is right. The essential prayer is the prayer of petition.

That mystic clasp of love lies not on the threshold but at the end of spiritual life, and can be reached for the most part only after much spiritual exercising, many denials, self-denials, watchings, and, it may be, the Cross of pain and disillusionment.

The Virgin Birth is possible if there is a God. An Omnipotent Being who can do all things and yet cannot do some things is hardly worth our attack or defence.

The deductive reasons for a course of action usually follow rather than precede the course of action. Thought follows life.

The forms of thought, into which we throw our timid views of God, are but symbols of truths greater than our thoughts. Yet we may not set them aside as worthless, for they are the rungs on which we dwellers in the cave climb to the full view of the Truth, as he is.

Though many men would be content to follow Christ by taking up their cross, few would be willing to follow Him by denying their reason.

We cannot go alone to God. We belong to His Mystical Body, the Church; by even our most secret sins, if they be grievous, we have injured the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and must ask forgiveness of His Mystical Body, too.

We shall not hold the dangerous axiom that 'truth is the best policy,' because policy is but a means to an end; and truth is an end, not a means.

We shall seek first to tell the truth rather than to study the subtle art of adjusting it to the circumstances of time and person.

What is superfluous to your poor estate, distribute. This is distributive charity: a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom.

Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears not to oust them.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

This joy of discovery is real, and it is one of our rewards. So too is the approval of our work by our peers.

Let there be more joy and laughter in your living.

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

And the goal really is to make the audience laugh, to bring them some joy.

Off with you! You're a happy fellow, for you'll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that!

Who promised you that only for joy were you brought to this earth?

It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.

You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces - my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.