Spain: God's Octopus

You want to be a martyr. I'll place a martyrdom within your reach: to be an apostle and not call yourself an apostle, to be a missionary—with a mission—and not call yourself a missionary, to be a man of God and to seem a man of the world: to pass unnoticed.

—The Way

The Way is surely one of the world's most extraordinary bestsellers. Written in 1933 by a Spanish priest named Jose-maria Escrivá, it consists of 999 aphorisms (sample: "Be firm! Be strong! Be a man! And then—be an angel!") that come...