John Paul II

"Do not be afraid to take a chance on peace, to teach peace, to live peace... Peace will be the last word of history."

"Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece."

"Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it."

"The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place."

"He was alone in his wonderment,amoung creatures incapable of wonder--for them it was enough to exist and go their way."

"...all that is carried alongby the stream's silvery cascade,rhythmically falling from the mountain,carried by its own current--carried where?"

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

"Merry Christmas!"

"True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace."

"The future starts today, not tomorrow."

"Know what you are talking about."

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

"The true Christian can nurture a trustful optimism, because he is certain of not walking alone. In sending us Jesus, the eternal Son made man, God has drawn near to each of us. In Christ he has become our travelling companion."

"Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth."

"The ethos of redemption is realized in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires."