Quotes from Matthew Kelly

God of hope, I look to you with an open heart and yearning spirit. During this Advent season, I will keep alert and awake, listening for your word and keeping to your precepts. My hope is in you.

Prayer is like a great love. When you start dating the silence can be awkward, but as you grow to know each other you can sit in silence for hours and just being with each other is a great comfort.

Thought determines action. Do not let your whole life be a reaction to the things that happen around you each day. Let your life be an action.

Our lives change when our habits change.

Let your life be guided by greatness

Work-life balance was a mistake from the start. Because we don't really want balance. We want satisfaction.

Catholicism is not a lifeless set of rules and regulations. Catholicism is a lifestyle. Catholicism is a way of life designed by God to help you become all you can be.

The measure of your life will be the measure of your courage.

If you don't have time to pray and read the scriptures, you are busier than God ever intended you to be.

Whether you are sixteen or sixty, the rest of your life is ahead of you. You cannot change one moment of your past, but you can change your whole future. Now is your time.

We become the books we read.

Love is the wanting, and the having, and the choosing, and the becoming. Love is the desire to see the person we love be and become all he or she is capable of being and becoming. Love is a willingness to lay down our own personal plans, desires, and agenda for the good of the relationship. Love is delayed gratification, pleasure, and pain. Love is being able to live and thrive apart, but choosing to be together.

The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us to become the best version of ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man becomes great on his own. No woman becomes great on her own. The people around them help to make them great. We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, remind us of our essential purpose, and challenge us to become the best version of ourselves.

In fact, the more each person can remove his or her ego from the discussion and focus on the subject matter, the more fruitful the conversation will be for all involved.

Freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom is the strength of character to do what is good, true, noble, and right.

Who you become is infinitely more important than what you do, or what you have.

We don't want to think about our weaknesses. We don't want to talk about them, and we certainly don't want anyone else to point them out. This is a classic sign of mediocrity, and this mediocrity has a firm grip on the Church and humanity at this moment in history.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body and prayer is to the soul.

Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a month. We overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. by Matthew Kelly from the book The Long View

The notion of freedom proclaimed by the modern world is anti-discipline. But true freedom cannot be separated from discipline.

God does not want to control you, or stifle you, or manipulate you, or force you to do anything you don't want to do. Quite the opposite. God will let you do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, with whomever you want to do it, and as often as you want to do it. When was the last time God stopped you from doing anything?

If we will walk humbly with our God, He will lead us by the hand to exactly who and what we need, to those people, things, and experiences He has designed and intended for us, and this alone will be the cause of our deep fulfillment and happiness.

Withholding love is a bit like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Life is about love. It's about whom you love and whom you hurt. Life's about how you love yourself and how you hurt yourself. Life's about how you love and hurt the people close to you. Life is about how you love and hurt the people who just cross your path for a moment. Life is about love.