“God moves mountains, but bring a big shovel.”
(Monastic Saying)
"We work to become, not to acquire."
(Elbert Hubbard)
"When you come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknow, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly."
(Barbara J. Winter)
“If change is to come, it will come from the margins... It was the desert, not the temple, that gave the prophets.”
(Wendell Berry)
"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented."
(Elie Wiesel)
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting."
(e.e. cummings)
"A song will outlive all sermons in the memory."
(Henry Giles)
"Think you're getting closer to enlightenment? Try spending a week with your parents."
(Zen adage)
The fifteen-year-old daughter of a friend once addressed the old Carl Jung as follows: "Herr Professor, you are so clever. Could you please tell me the shortest path to my life's goal?"
Without a moment's hesitation Jung replied, "The detour!"
(Recounted by Richard Kehl)
"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."
(F. Dostoyevsky)
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God."
(Simone Weil)
"Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black."
(Kelly Robinson)
"Traders stole our furs, settlers our lands, now missionaries want our souls."
(Native American Indian saying)
“Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.”
(James Billings)
“Do not wait for leaders – do it alone, person to person.”
(Mother Teresa)
“I am not retreating. I am advancing in a different direction.”
(Gen. Douglas MacArthur)
“In the beginning, God created man in his own image, and ever since, man has been returning the compliment.”
(Voltaire)
“Life in Lubbock,Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you but you’re going to burn in Hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.”
(Butch Hancock)
"The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular one and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries."
(Iris Murdoch)
"Personally, I know nothing about sex because I have always been married."
(Zsa Zsa Gabor)
"Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories."
(John Wilmot)
“More than anytime in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
(Woody Allen)
“I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, ‘Got any shoes you’re not using?’”
(Steven Wright)
“I used to be an Atheist, but I gave it up: there were no Holidays.”
(Henny Youngman)
Joan of Arc: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.
Robert: They come from your imagination.
Joan of Arc: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.
(George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan”)
“The people you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you. When your children see you owned, then they are not your children anymore, they are the children of what owns you. If money owns you, they are the children of money. If your need for pretense and illusion owns you, they are the children of pretense and illusion. If your fear of loneliness owns you, they are the children of loneliness. If your fear of the truth owns you, they are the children of the fear of truth.”
(Michael Ventura)
"My lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I can not know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you will never leave me to face my perils alone."
(Thomas Merton, Trappist monk)
"I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself."
(Johnny Carson)
"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough."
(Meister Eckhart, mystic)
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberate others.”
(Marianne Williamson “A Return to Love")
“I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.”
(Boris Pasternak)
"I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickness is a place more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it’s always a place where there’s no company, where nobody can follow.... Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies."
(Flannery O’Connor)
“Jesus’ life didn’t go well. He didn’t reach his earning potential. He didn’t have the respect of his colleagues. His friends weren’t loyal. His life wasn’t long. He didn’t meet his soul-mate. And he wasn’t understood by his mother.
Yet I think I deserve all those things because I’m so spiritual."
(Hugh Prather, “Spiritual Notes to Myself”)
"Why should a man's mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his own body."
(Thomas Hardy)
“I asked God to take away my bad habit.
God said, No.
It is not for me to take away,
but for you to give up.
I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.
God said, No.
Her spirit is whole, her body is only temporary.
I asked God to grant me patience.
God said, No.
Patience is a byproduct of tribulations;
it isn't granted, it is learned.
I asked God to give me happiness.
God said, No.
I give you blessings;
Happiness is up to you.
I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No.
Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares
and brings you closer to me.
I asked God to make my spirit grow.
God said, No.
You must grow on your own,
but I will prune you to make you fruitful.
I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life.
God said, No.
I will give you life,
so that you may enjoy all things.
I asked God to help me LOVE others,
as much as God loves me.
God said...Ahhhh,
finally you have the idea.”
(Unknown Source)
"When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: 'Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer,' and again the miracle would be accomplished. Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: 'I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.' It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished. Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: 'I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.' And it was sufficient.
God made man because he loves stories."
(Elie Wiesel, "The Gates of the Forest")
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.”
(Richard Bach)
"The moment that one definitely commits one's self, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man or woman could have dreamt would have come his way."
(Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)
"When we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
(Henri Nouwen, "The Wounded Healer")
"Poetry is being, not doing
If you would follow,
Even at a distance,
The poet's calling,
You've got to come out of the
Measurable doing universe
Into the immeasurable house of being.
Nobody can be alive for you.
Nor can you be alive for anyone else.
If you can take it, take it and be,
If you can't, cheer up and go about
Other people's business, and do and undo
Until you drop."
(e.e. cummings)
"You can't conceive, no one could, the appaling strangeness of the mercy of God."
(Graham Greene)
"There is something that happens between men and women in the dark that seems to make everything else unimportant."
(Tennessee Williams)
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