15 Quotes by Pope John Paul I

They call it "young music"; I see, however, that the record industry makes millions by the carload for shrewd older people! They invoke the name of spontaneity, nonconformity and originality; actually, canny "clothing industrialists" manipulate the field, undisturbed sovereigns! They call themselves revolutionaries, but the overscrupulous attentions devoted to their hair and their dress risk creating merely effeminates.

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!

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.

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!

My dear Péguy, it would, however, be wrong to wait, to postpone continually. He who takes the road of later ends then on the road of never. I know some people who seem to turn life into a perpetual waiting room. The trains come and go, and they say: 'I'll leave another time! I'll make a confession on my deathbed!' Visconti-Venosta said of the 'hero Anselmo':A day goes by, and then another,But the hero Anselmo never returns.Here we have the opposite: an Anselmo who never sets out.

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.

God is our father, but even more is God our mother.

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards ‘having’ rather than ‘being,’ and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.

I will see you tomorrow, if God wills it.