John Paul II > Quotes

“The future starts today, not tomorrow.”
― John Paul II

“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, makng the world more human and more fraternal.”
― John Paul II

“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.”
― John Paul II

“Know what you are talking about.”
― John Paul II

“Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth.”
― John Paul II

“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.”
― John Paul II

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
― John Paul II

“Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
― John Paul II

“The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.”
― John Paul II

“The worst prison would be a closed heart.”
― John Paul II

“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”
― 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.”
― John Paul II

“Ask yourselves, young people, about the love of Christ. Acknowledge His voice resounding in the temple of your heart. Return His bright and penetrating glance which opens the paths of your life to the horizons of the Church’s mission. It is a taxing mission, today more than ever, to teach men the truth about themselves, about their end, their destiny, and to show faithful souls the unspeakable riches of the love of Christ. Do not be afraid of the radicalness of His demands, because Jesus, who loved us first, is prepared to give Himself to you, as well as asking of you. If He asks much of you, it is because He knows you can give much.”
― John Paul II, The Meaning of Vocation

“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.”
― John Paul II

“Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence.”
― John Paul II

“He was alone in his wonderment,
amoung creatures incapable of wonder
--for them it was enough to exist and go their way.”
― John Paul II

“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.”
― John Paul II

“Merry Christmas!”
― John Paul II

“The ethos of redemption is realied in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires.”
― John Paul II, Blessed Are the Pure of Heart: Catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount and Writings of St. Paul

“Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remains standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.”
― John Paul II

“A person's rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object for use.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“I plead with you-never,ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.”
― John Paul II, Pope John Paul II: In My Own Words

“...all that is carried along
by the stream's silvery cascade,
rhythmically falling from the mountain,
carried by its own current--
carried where?”
― John Paul II

“In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.”
― John Paul II, Blessed Are the Pure of Heart: Catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount and Writings of St. Paul

“Life is entrusted to man as a treasure which must not be squandered, as a talent which must be used well.”
― John Paul II

“ This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern metropolis. ”
― John Paul II

“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.”
― John Paul II, Purity of Heart: Reflections on Love and Lust / Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body in Simple Language, Vol. 2

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
― John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio: On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason: Encyclical Letter of John Paul II

“The lust of the flesh directs these desires [of personal union], however, to satisfaction of the body, often at the cost of a real and full communion of persons.”
― John Paul II, Blessed Are the Pure of Heart: Catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount and Writings of St. Paul

“Learning to think rigorously, so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better.”
― John Paul II

“Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command … but … attempts … to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship.”
― John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope

“Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.”, “Fides et Ratio”, "Faith and Reason", § 4, paragraph 1, last sentence”
― John Paul II

“Man cannot remain with no way out.”
― John Paul II

“The ethos of redemption is realized in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires.”
― John Paul II

“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.”
― John Paul II

“Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“Friendship, as has been said, consists in a full commitment of the will to another person with a view to that person's good.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“...if desire is predominant it can deform love between man and woman and rob them both of it.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“Christ is the sacrament‎ of the invisible God - a sacrament that indicates presence. God is with us.”
― John Paul II

“Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“Take away from love the fullness of self surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it.”
― John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

“Svetac nije bezgrešan čovjek, bez slabosti, čovjek koji ne podliježe kušnjama, nego je svetac netko tko zna uzeti Boga za ruku, ima odvažnosti uistinu se zagledati u sebe i uvidjeti svoju nesavršenost, ali istodobno ima povjerenja u Boga, u Njegovo milosrđe, te uspijeva, unatoč vlastitim slabostima, izvući iz sebe svu skrivenu ljepotu koja je samo zrcalna slika Božje ljepote. Svetac vrlo čvrsto hoda po zemlji, muči se s raznim problemima, bori se sa svojim slabostima, a istodobno je pun nade.”
― John Paul II