“You go on trying and trying, and you make many decisions and you take many vows,but nothing happens — you remain the same. Not that you have not tried,not that you have not tried enough, you have tried and tried and tried. And you fail because it is not a question of effort. More effort won’t help. It is a question of being alert, not of effort.”

“You stopped out of fear, or the subconscious assumption that you are immortal, that there will always be time. You promised yourself; Later.”

“Being alert is not to vigilantly stand on tip-toe in order to scan some distant horizon out of the fear of some approaching enemy. Quite the opposite. It is falling to our knees knowing that God is already out on that horizon and that He thwarted the enemy long before they ever reached it.”