Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church.
Pope John Paul II

Modern Society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles.
Pope John Paul II

Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society.
Pope John Paul II

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Pope John Paul II

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
Pope John Paul II

The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.
Pope John Paul II

The future starts today, not tomorrow.
Pope John Paul II

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.
Pope John Paul II

The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels the great need of your assistance, your prayers, your sacrifice, and he most humbly asks this of you.
Pope John Paul II

The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a proof of the priest's inner maturity; it is the expression of his personal dignity.
Pope John Paul II

War is a defeat for humanity.
Pope John Paul II

Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile.
Pope John Paul II

When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.
Pope John Paul II

Work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons.
Pope John Paul II

You are priests, not social or political leaders. Let us not be under the illusion that we are serving the Gospel through an exaggerated interest in the wide field of temporal problems.
Pope John Paul II

You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate.
Pope John Paul II

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.
Pope John Paul II

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
Pope Paul VI

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest.
Pope Paul VI

Every mother is like Moses. She does not enter the promised land. She prepares a world she will not see.
Pope Paul VI

Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
Pope Paul VI

Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin, except to be there when he doesn't want her.
Pope Paul VI

If you want peace work for justice.
Pope Paul VI

In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long.
Pope Paul VI

Liturgy is like a strong tree whose beauty is derived from the continuous renewal of its leaves, but whose strength comes from the old trunk, with solid roots in the ground.
Pope Paul VI

Never give advice in a crowd.
Pope Paul VI

Never reach out your hand unless you're willing to extend an arm.
Pope Paul VI

No more war! Never again war! If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.
Pope Paul VI

Nothing makes one feel so strong as a call for help.
Pope Paul VI

Of all human activities, man's listening to God is the supreme act of his reasoning and will.
Pope Paul VI

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.
Pope Paul VI

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
Pope Paul VI

Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.
Pope Paul VI

The Eucharistic mystery stands at the heart and center of the liturgy since it is the fount of life by which we are cleansed and strengthened to live not for ourselves but for God and to be united in love among ourselves.
Pope Paul VI

The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.
Pope Paul VI

The pope is becoming a missionary, you will say. Yes, the pope is becoming a missionary, which means a witness, a shepherd, an apostle on the move.
Pope Paul VI

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
Pope Paul VI


You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.
Pope Paul VI

A peaceful man does more good than a learned one.
Pope John XXIII

Anybody can be Pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.
Pope John XXIII

Born poor, but of honored and humble people, I am particularly proud to die poor.
Pope John XXIII

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
Pope John XXIII

Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity.
Pope John XXIII

I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.
Pope John XXIII

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
Pope John XXIII

It is now for the Catholic Church to bend herself to her work with calmness and generosity. It is for you to observe her with renewed and friendly attention.
Pope John XXIII

It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
Pope John XXIII

Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.
Pope John XXIII

Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.
Pope John XXIII

See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.
Pope John XXIII

The council now beginning rises in the Church like the daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light.
Pope John XXIII

The family is the first essential cell of human society.
Pope John XXIII

The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company.
Pope John XXIII

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.
Pope John XXIII

We ardently desire their return to the house of the common Father they will not enter a strange house but their own.
Pope John XXIII

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