Editorial Note: not every famous saying attributed to Saint Carlo Acutis was necessarily coined by him. Catholic newspaper Avvenire has specifically questioned the originality of the sayings about being “originals” and “photocopies” and about happiness and sadness as the direction of one’s gaze.

The principal source for the collection below is the official Association’s page, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis

Part I. Sayings published by the official Carlo Acutis Association

The following 20 quotations appear on the Association’s official English-language page, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. The exact source for each item is the same page; the page does not provide individual manuscript, letter, or interview references for every saying.

A. The Eucharist and union with Jesus

1. “To always be united with Jesus, that is my program of life.”

Source: Official Carlo Acutis Association, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. Read the original source.

2. “Not I but God.”

Source: Official Carlo Acutis Association, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. Read the original source.

3. “Without Him I can do nothing.”

Source: Official Carlo Acutis Association, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. The website contains a typographical error immediately before this quotation, but the saying itself is identifiable.

B. Holiness and conversion

4. “The only thing we truly have to fear is sin.”

5. “Our Goal must be the Infinite, not the finite.”

6. “Not self-love but the Glory of God.”

7. “Sanctification is not a process of addition but of subtraction. Less of me to make room for God.”

8. “What does it profit a man to win a thousand battles if he is not able to conquer himself?”

9. “The true disciple of Jesus Christ is he who in everything seeks to imitate Him and to do the will of God.”

10. “Only he who does the will of God will be truly free.”

Exact source for quotations 4–10: Official Carlo Acutis Association, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. Open the official collection.

C. Prayer, the Rosary, and the Church

11. “The Rosary is the shortest ladder to climb to Heaven.”

12. “After the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Rosary is the most powerful weapon to fight the Devil.”

13. “To criticize the Church is to criticize ourselves! The Church is the dispenser of treasures for our salvation.”

14. “A life is truly beautiful only if one comes to love God above all things and one’s neighbor as oneself.”

Exact source for quotations 11–14: Official Carlo Acutis Association, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. Open the official collection.

D. The soul and the meaning of life

15. “Why do men worry so much about the beauty of their body and then not worry about the beauty of their soul?”

16. “If God possesses our heart, we will possess the Infinite.”

17. “Conversion is nothing other than shifting the gaze from below to Above, a simple movement of the eyes is enough.”

18. “Find God and you will find the meaning of your life.”

19. “Life is a gift because as long as we are on this planet we can increase our level of charity. The higher it is, the more we will enjoy the Eternal Beatitude of God.”

20. “What will truly make us beautiful in the eyes of God will only be the way we have loved Him and how we have loved our brothers.”

Exact source for quotations 15–20: Official Carlo Acutis Association, The Phrases of Carlo Acutis. Open the official collection.

Part II. Additional sayings reported by Catholic sources

These quotations are supported by sources beyond the official Association’s quotation page. The distinction matters: a quotation reproduced in a reliable biography or news report is not necessarily accompanied by a surviving primary document.

21. “Each person reflects the light of God.”

Source: Vatican News, Carlo Acutis: Millennial generation has a Blessed, October 2020. The article reports this as something Carlo commonly said.

22. “I want to offer all my sufferings for the Lord, for the Pope, and for the Church. I don’t want to do purgatory; I want to go straight to Heaven.”

Source: Vatican News, Cardinal Becciu: Carlo Acutis, a life offered for Jesus, the Church, 17 June 2020. Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu cited these words while speaking about Carlo’s faith.

23. “The Eucharist is my highway to Heaven.”

Source: Widely reported in Catholic biographical sources, including Vatican News, Carlo Acutis: Millennial generation has a Blessed.

24. “The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of Heaven.”

Source: Wikiquote, Carlo Acutis entry. This is a secondary quotation source, so I recommend checking its cited reference before using it as a strictly authenticated quotation.

Part III. Famous sayings that need an attribution note

These are often included in quote collections, but they deserve special care.

25. “Everyone is born as an original, but many die as photocopies.”

26. “Happiness is the gaze directed towards God. Sadness is the gaze directed towards oneself.”

Both sayings are reproduced by the official Association. However, the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, in an article published on 10 October 2024, explained that neither expression appears to have originated with Carlo: the first has a parallel in Edward Young’s 1759 essay Conjectures on Original Composition, while the second closely resembles a saying found in the writings of the Carthusian monk Dom Augustin Guillerand.

Publication Note: “A saying frequently associated with Saint Carlo Acutis.” This preserves the spiritual value of the sayings without incorrectly claiming that he coined them.