“The Republic of Venice used to boast that, in the space of three months, it could know all the events of the Mediterranean. We see the astronauts, from the distance of a few feet, at the very moment they land on the moon. Unfortunately the news almost swamps us with its frequency and abundance. It doesn't give us time to reflect: we are so constantly amazed that gradually we lose our capacity for being surprised at anything, and we don't enjoy even beautiful things.”

“Pope John Paul II once said as well, “Lebanon is a message more than it is a country.” Now this diversity has turned into fragmentation and the richness into poverty, awaiting a miraculous remedy.”

“Loving ourselves so much, we are naturally led to enlarge our own merits, to play down our transgressions, to judge others by different standards from those used to judge ourselves. Enlarged merits? They are described by your fellow-writer Trilussa:The little snail of VaingloryWho had crawled up an obeliskLooked at its slimy trail and said:I see I'll leave my mark on History.This is the way we are, dear Twain; even a bit of slime, if it is our own, and because it is our own, makes us boast, gives us a swelled head!”

“When I am paid a compliment, I must compare myself with the little donkey that carried Christ on Palm Sunday. And I say to myself: If that little creature, hearing the applause of the crowd, had become proud and had begun -- jackass that he was -- to bow his thanks left and right like a prima donna, how much hilarity he would have aroused! Don't act the same!”

“The Republic of Venice used to boast that, in the space of three months, it could know all the events of the Mediterranean. We see the astronauts, from the distance of a few feet, at the very moment they land on the moon. Unfortunately the news almost swamps us with its frequency and abundance. It doesn't give us time to reflect: we are so constantly amazed that gradually we lose our capacity for being surprised at anything, and we don't enjoy even beautiful things.”

“I plead with you--never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.”

“The Christian should be characterized by an effort to see things in the best light; if it is true that the word Evangelos means good news, then Christian means happy man, spreader of happiness. 'Grim faces,' Saint Philip Neri used to say, 'are not made for the merry house of Paradise!”

“On one hand the eternal attraction of man towards femininity (cf. Gn. 2:23) frees in him-or perhaps it should free-a gamut of spiritual-corporal desires of an especially personal and "sharing" nature (cf. analysis of the "beginning"), to which a proportionate pyramid of values corresponds. On the other hand, "lust" limits this gamut, obscuring the pyramid of values that marks the perennial attraction of male and female.”

“So far as I am aware no leader of a party of the European left in the past twenty-five years has declared capitalism as such to be unacceptable as a system. The only public figure to do so unhesitatingly was Pope John Paul II.”

“This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, "Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution."[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms). --Making Senses of Scripture”

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”