Quotes from Richard J. Foster

When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.

As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life.

The inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life.

In intellectual honesty, we should be willing to study and explore the spiritual life with all the rigor and determination we would give to any field of research.

We must understand the connection between inner solitude and inner silence; they are inseparable. All the masters of the interior life speak of the two in the same breath.

Grace saves us from life without God-even more it empowers us for life with God.

God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.

And so I urge you: carry on an ongoing conversation with God about the daily stuff of life, a little like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. For now, do not worry about "proper" praying, just talk to God.

Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals

You will never have time for prayer; you must make time.

May God give you - and me- the courage, the wisdom, the strength always to hold the kingdom of God as the number one priority of our lives. To do so is to live in simplicity.

When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important

We who have turned our lives over to Christ need to know how very much he longs to eat with us, to commune with us. He desires a perpetual Eucharistic feast in the inner sanctuary of the heart.

What is urgently needed is a bold new move from a consumer economy to a conserver economy in all of the developed countries, and particularly in the United States.

Absolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit.

Simplicity is freedom.