Be Human In This Most Inhuman Of

The Only Trouble Is That In The Spiritual Life There Are No Tricks And No Shortcuts. Those Who Imagine That They Can Discover Spiritual Gimmicks And Put Them To Work For Themselves Usually Ignore God's Will And His Grace.

For Perfect Hope Is Achieved On The Brink Of Despair, When Instead Of Falling Over The Edge, We Find Ourselves Walking On Air.

The Importance Of Detachment From Things, The Importance Of Poverty, Is That We Are Supposed To Be Free From Things That We Might Prefer To People. Wherever Things Have Become More Important Than People, We Are In Trouble. That Is The Crux Of The Whole Matter.

Only The Man Who Has Had To Face Despair Is Really Convinced That He Needs Mercy. Those Who Do Not Want Mercy Never Seek It. It Is Better To Find God On The Threshold Of Despair Than To Risk Our Lives In A Complacency That Has Never Felt The Need Of Forgiveness. A Life That Is Without Problems May Literally Be More Hopeless Than One That Always Verges On Despair.

The Danger Of Education, I Have Found, Is That It So Easily Confuses Means With Ends. Worse Than That, It Quite Easily Forgets Both And Devotes Itself Merely To The Mass Production Of Uneducated Gradtuates - People Literaly Unfit For Anything Except To Take Part In An Elaborate And Completely Artificial Charade Which They And Their Contemporaries Have Conspired To Call "life".