No way exists in the present to accurately determine the future effect of the least of our actions.
In vain our labours are, whatsoe'er they be, unless God gives the Benediction.
God alone can finish.
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result.
God hasn't called me to be successful. He's called me to be faithful.
An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by its own fullness, not by its reception.
Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results.
On earth we have nothing to do with success or results, but only with being true to God, and for God. Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
The man who has done his level best, and who is conscious that he has done his best, is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.
To create is to boggle the mind and alter the mood. Once the urge has surged, it maintains its own momentum. We may go along for the ride, but when we attempt to steer the course, the momentum dies.
Try first thyself, and after call in God, For to the worker God himself lends aid.
If thou workest at that which is before thee ... expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.
If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life.
You have striven so hard, and so long, to compel life. Can't you now slowly change, and let life slowly drift into you ... let the invisible life steal into you and slowly possess you.
Coercive power is the curse of the universe; coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.
I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know.
A guru might say that spiritual deepening involves a journey toward the unselfconscious living of life as it unfolds, rather than toward a willful determination to make it happen.
