Quotisms!

"I quote others only the better to understand myself".
Michel de Montaigne


"I'm careful not to confuse Excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God's business". MJF


"A person who lives only at the active level is like someone who only breathes out, or like a heart that only releases blood. That would be a strange kind of life, if indeed it were even possible."

Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB Work and Leisure


"I stand at my window and watch one by one the stars all leave me. I am having tea with the dawn the first ray of sun descending into my teacup into my heart. The steam of my tea ascending to the heavens into God’s heart. The yearning in my heart streaming to the heavens into God’s heart And God, standing in the heavens watching the sun rise in my heart leans down to breathe in the first rays of my yearning and names it morning prayer."

Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB Seasons of Your Heart


"Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them".

Thomas Merton


"Nothing is in vain or without profit to the humble soul: like the bee,it takes its honey from the bitter herbs; it stands always in a state of divine growth, and everything that falls upon it is a dew of Heaven to it".
William Law



"Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights". Henry David Thoreau



"God can do great things through the person who doesn't care who gets the credit". Robert Schuller



"What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other"?
George Eliot


"Let us. . . touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work".
Mother Theresa of Calcutta


"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity" .
George Bernard Shaw


"The entire population of the universe,with one trifling exception, is composed of others". John Andrew Holmes



"Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough".
Charles Dudley Warner


"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak". Hans Hofmann


"It's possible to have too much in life. Too many clothes jade our appreciation for new ones; too much money can put us out of touch with life; too much free time can dull the edge of the soul. We need sometimes to come very near the bone so that we can taste the marrow of life rather than its superfluities".
Sister Joan Chittister, OSB



"I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people, that each protects the solitude of the other". Rainer Maria Rilke


"The most important education you get is your own--the one you learn in solitude". Erica Jong


"What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be".
Ellen Burstyn

"We visit others as a matter of social obligation. How long has it been since we have visited with ourselves"?
Morris Adler



"The first duty of love is to listen". Paul Tillich


"Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf." Native North American Proverb


"One who cares is one who listens". J. Richard Clarke


"Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface". Confucius

"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness".
Mohandas Ghandi


"There are times when silence has the loudest voice". Leroy Brownlow

"Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence".
Rainer Maria Rilke


"Silence is taking time to listen to the grass grow like love in the garden of your soul."
Sr. Kimberly R. Prohaska, OSB


"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place". Zen Saying

"Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung. The other monk asked him, "Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know its nature is to sting?" "Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."
Zen Saying


"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow,you gotta put up with the rain".
Dolly Parton



"Worry is like a rocking chair—it keeps you moving but doesn’t get you anywhere". Corrie Ten Boom



"People are what they think about all day long". Ralph Waldo Emerson



"The difference between a grave and a rut are the dimensions". Dale Carnegie


"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced". James Baldwin



"If you realize that all things change,there is nothing you will try to hold onto". Tao Te Ching

"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others".
Dietrich Bonhoeffer



"Be grateful for what you have, not regretful for what you haven't". Anonymous



"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and the pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink".
G. K. Chesterton

"If we could read the secret history of others, we would find in each person’s life suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow