Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft

“You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.”

“How do we listen to his voice? With the ear of our heart. With love. Love has ears, as love has eyes. Just be there, and love him, and let him love you." (35). Easier said than done. "What will happen then? What will we hear? Let God take care of that. Seek only him, do not use him as a means to seek any other end. He is not your Santa, he is your Savior. I cannot tell you what he will give you, except for one thing: he will give you himself. He will give you more of himself the more you want him, that is, the more you love him. He wants to pour infinite riches into your soul; prayer is a way of opening up your soul so more of God can enter.”

“God is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of God. Music is a language more profound than words. How often have you heard a great piece of music and felt that? Great music does not just make you feel good; great music suggests some profound truth or mysterious meaning that is objectively true but not translatable into words.”

“god is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of god. music is a language more profound than words. how often have you heard a great piece of music and felt that? great music does not just make you feel good; great music suggests some profound truth or mysterious meaning that objectively true but not translatable into words. attempts to translate music's meaning into words always fail. it is like trying to allegorize a symbol, trying to reduce to one literal, verbal meaning something that has many nonliteral, nonverbal meanings.”

“That freedom is lost in Hell.”

“Morality means choice. Choice means priorities. Priorities mean a hierarchy. A hierarchy means something at the top, a standard. That is the greatest good. If you have no greatest good, you have no hierarchy, you have no priorities. If you have no priorities, you cannot make intelligent choices. If you cannot make intelligent moral choices, you have no morality. You can still guide your life by your feelings or by social fashions, but that is not choice – not free, responsible, moral choice. Both feelings and fashions push you; you are passive. But moral choice is your own doing; you are active. You are responsible for your choices but not for your feelings or for your environment’s fashions.”

“Why Won’t We Be Bored in Heaven? Because we are with God, and God is infinite. We never come to the end of exploring Him. He is new every day. Because we are with God, and God is eternal. Time does not pass (a condition for boredom); it just is. All time is present in eternity, as all the events of the plot are present in an author’s mind. There is no waiting. Because we are with God, and God is love. Even on earth, the only people who are never bored are lovers.”

“Only Judaism and Christianity are religions of public record, eyewitnessed facts.”

“Thus, though Christians are in no way bound by the Jewish ceremonial or civil laws (because they were all in some way preparatory for Christ), we are still under the Ten Commandments in one way, though not in two other ways.”

“Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

“The more consciously and freely we choose an evil, the more responsible we are for it and the more guilty we are of it; this is why spiritual sins like pride are greater in guilt than carnal sins.”

“St. Thomas would have agreed with Leon Bloy, who often wrote that in the end there is only one tragedy in life: not to have been a saint.”

“when the soul no longer conforms to the will of God, the body no longer conforms to the will of the soul.”

“It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, “Like a human body.”)”

“But that is all prayer requires: faith, hope, and love. Great holiness, or piety, or sanctity are not required. Prayer is a road holiness.”

“To invoke Jesus' name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy. The prayer of Jesus' name actually brings God closer, making him more present. He is always present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayers a difference; 'prayer changes things.' It may or may not change our external circumstances. (It does if God sees that that change is good for us; it does not if God sees that it is not.) but it always changes our relationship to God, which is infinitely more important than external circumstances, however pressing they may seem, because it is eternal but they are temporary, and because it is our very self but they are not.”

“One of the reasons lust is bad (not the only reason) is that it makes you stupid. Like any addiction, it blinds your vision to everything else and focuses it on the one thing that is the object of your addiction.”

“Brother Lawrence says, in , 'There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it' (Letter 5). No one who has ever tried it has ever given it a lesser rating than that. For even though our prayer-contact with God may be almost infinitely poor, the God we thus contact is infinitely rich! Therefore, 'we are to be pitied who content ourselves with so little. God has infinite treasure to bestow' (Letter 4). What is that? 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, not the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him' (1 Cor 2:9).”

“Your heart may be paltry compared with the heart of a great saint, but your heart is what God wants from you.”

“Only because a bird doesn't swim in the ocean but flies in the air can it enter the ocean from above; only because God is not temporal can he enter into time.”