Worth Repeating

Worth Repeating

Favorite Quotations

Click below for additional quotes:

Endings & Beginnings

"The line between the end and the beginning is sometimes hard to discern, like the line separating the sand from the sea. They seem to run together for a while, and what we think is an ending often becomes a new beginning.

-- Bill Gaither

Hope

"Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change."

-- Jim Wallis

Patience

"Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting."

-- Joyce Meyer

Adversity

"Adversity not only draws people together but brings forth that
beautiful inward friendship, just as the cold winter forms ice-figures on
the window panes which the warmth of the sun effaces."

-- Soren Kierkegaard
(1813-1855, Danish Philosopher, Writer)

A Dog

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's very dark.""

-- Groucho Marx

The Last Century

"In the last century we've shown the world how we can attack and solve perplexing problems with technology. Imagine if we were to apply that same intellectual power to solving the world's greatest problems -- poverty, overpopulation, pollution.... We can all take the hero's journey. It beings with a single step, the moment we stand up for something we believe in."

-- Walter Cronkite

Listening

"Listening, not imitation, may be the most sincere form of flattery."

-- Dr. Joyce Brothers

Grant Me

"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's ME."

-- John Miller

All I know

"All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me."

-- Fred Rogers

Relationships

"The crucial thing in all relationships
is the ability to repair the inevitable breaks.
That's the rhythm of any relationship --
finding, losing, and then finding again."

-- Carol Gilligan

No Passion

""There is no passion to be found playing small -
in settling for a life that is less than
the one you are capable of living."

-- Nelson Mandela

Honest Journey

"If you are on an honest journey to find yourself, you'll find God."

-- Martin Sheen

A Story

"Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."

-- Madeleine
L'Engle "The Writer", June 2002

God's Spies

"It is not the function of the old to explain or to analyze or to impart information. To them comes the great opportunity of taking upon themselves the mystery of things, of becoming, as it were, God's spies. A spy is one who penetrates into a hidden mystery and a spy of God is that one who sees at the heart of every manifestation of life the mysterium tremendum that is God."

-- Helen M. Luke, from "Old Age"

Magical Things

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

--Eden Phillpotts

Your Light

"You may not think that the world needs you, but it does. For, you are unique, like no one that has ever been before or will come after. No one can speak with your voice, say your piece, smile your smile or shine your light. No one can take your place, for it is yours alone to fill. If you are not there to shine your light, who knows how many travelers will lose their way as they try to pass by your empty place in the darkness."

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Opening Boundaries

"The more you become aware of your own center,
the more you can open your boundaries."

-- Richard Rohr

Created for Joy

Grant that we may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world may bestow upon us, but that we may know at last that we were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to the one alone who, sometimes with tears in his/her eyes, commits him/herself in love to God and to his/her brothers and sisters. Lead us and all your world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all people are one and that there can never be joy for any until there is joy for all.

-- Fredrick Buechner

What Is The Secret?

"What is the secret? The presence of God in everybody and everything -- in you yourself, in everybody you even look at, in animals, trees, rocks, loss, events, circumstances, everything. You look for and find the saving, thrilling, waiting presence of God there -- no matter what else seems to be there -- it is there, looking back at you, answering you, calling to you. Find it. See it. Hear it. 'Find Me' -- that is the door... You can come upon it any moment -- because you carry it with you -- it's within you. And the way you start is to decide with all your might to find it. And almost at once it begins to appear. And by and by, you find that everything you do and say springs from the center of you and so is true."

-- Celia Caroline Cole

Excellence

You do the good work, you be as excellent as possible, because excellence is the best deterrent to racism, sexism... When you are excellent, the world notices.

-- Oprah Winfrey

Come Alive

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

--Howard Thurman

The Philosopher

Life is life; you can't reverse it.

--Nathaniel Moon (7 years old)

Words

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Hope

True leaders deal in hope.

--Napoleon

Balancing Act

To love or not; in this we stand or fall.

--John Milton

Who Are We?

We know from a psychological standpoint that there is a profound sense in which who we are is only revealed in our relationships with others. When we enter into a relationship with someone we become who we could not be otherwise and learn things about ourselves that we did not know before. Not uncommonly we are surprised to realize how we tend to interact with others. In being children, and having children, in being loved, and loving another, in being rejected and misunderstood, as well as in being accepted and welcomed, we develop self-awareness and self-understanding, and the promise of our own life becomes a story.

--Christopher Morse

What a Wonderful World

The world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.

--Henry Miller

Love is all you need.

--The Beatles

Exploration
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time.

--T.S. Eliot

Soul
You lose the balance of your soul if you are a generous giver but a mean receiver.

--John O'Donohue

Harmony

You don't get harmony when everyone sings the same note.

--Doug Floyd

Sabbath

Remember the Sabbath," God admonishes us, "and keep it holy." Remember to rest. Remember we have enough, we've done enough, we are enough. Remember that God is in caring control of our lives and nothing we do -- or fail to do -- will alter God's loving presence.

-- Gordon Cosby

Together

People are longing to rediscover true community. We have had enough of loneliness, independence and competition.

-- Jean Vanier

Practicality

For any marriage between heaven and earth, comtemplatives also need to grapple day in and day out with economics.

--Elizabeth O'Connor
The Garden

Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I'm finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden.

--Jeanne Moreau

The Reality of Change

One day the Teacher said, "It is so much easier to travel that to stop."

"Why?" the disciple demanded to know.

"Because," the Teacher said, "as long as you travel to a goal you can hold on to a dream. When you stop, you must face reality."

"But how shall we ever change if we have no goals or dreams?" the disciples asked.

"Change that is real is change that is not willed. Face reality and unwilled change will happen."

-- as told by Joan Chittister

Vessels

Without a well-built container, there can be no real psychological or spiritual development, because there is no safe place to put it.

--Carol Pearson

God's Voice
Think back over your day and consider when God spoke. How did you sense it, or why did you fail to sense it at the the time? It is often between the lines and in the empty places where we hear God.

--Lonni Collins Pratt

Altered
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

-- Nelson Mandela

The Impossible

You must do the thing you cannot do.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

Questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms.
Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you,
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, Live along some distant day into the answer.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Witness

There's no use having a universe, a cosmology, if you don't have witnesses. We are the witnesses to the miracle. We are put here by creation, by God.... We're here to be the audience to the magnificent. It is our job to celebrate.

- Ray Bradbury