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

"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."

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

"The family is the first essential cell of human society."

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

"A peaceful man does more good than a learned one."

"I am able to follow my own death step by step. Now I move softly towards the end."

"Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity."

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

"Here I am at the end of the road and at the top of the heap."

"I have been able to follow my death step by step and now my life goes gently to its end."

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

"It is now for the Catholic Church to bend herself to her work with calmness and generosity. It is for you to observe her with renewed and friendly attention."

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

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

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

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

"It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope."