Pope John XXIII

“You must know that it is by the state of the lavatory that a family is judged.”

“Christian life means sacrifice.”

“Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.”

“Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity.”

“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”

“The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.”

“A peaceful man does more good than a learned one.”

“In this world of ours, every believer must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying ferment for the mass; and it will be that all the more as, in the depths of his being, he lives in communion with God.”

“The family is the first essential cell of human society.”

“If God created shadows it was to better emphasise the light.”

“The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company.”

“I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.”

“The council now beginning rises in the Church like the daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light.”

“Anybody can be Pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.”

“Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.”

“Born poor, but of honored and humble people, I am particularly proud to die poor.”

“See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.”

“Christ's flock is made up of sheep that not only listen to their shepherd, but are also able to recognize his voice, to follow him, faithfully and with full awareness, on the pastures of eternal life.”

“... just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.”

“It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.”