Quotes

"Realism" tell us about our enemies' goals; they're driven by a mad lust for power. We have to stop them because we are pursuing a higher goal—peaceful, democratic world order. To stop them, though, we must imitate them and use any means necessary. So we fight as if we were "realists" in order to eventually put an end to a world of "realism." — Ira Chernus

Laughter is carbonated holiness. — Anne Lamott

It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s. — Lupita Nyong’o, accepting the 2014 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Patsey, a real-life slave girl, in “12 Years a Slave”

Not everyone’s happy with Roman Catholic Pope Francis’ attention to the poor. “He is always talking about the poor and so the poor come to the Vatican and they have no money to spend." — Souvenir merchant near St. Peter’s

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. — Diane Ackerman

We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender, and there is no map of the silence that is surrender. . . . The practice of silence . . . cannot be reduced to a spiritual technique. Techniques are all the rage today. They suggest a certain control that aims to determine a certain outcome. They clearly have their place. But this is not what contemplative practice does. . . . A spiritual practice simply disposes us to allow something to take place. For example, a gardener does not actually grow plants. A gardener practices certain gardening skills that facilitate growth that is beyond the gardener’s direct control. — Martin Laird

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a living flame. — Mother Teresa

Don’t do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head up and down. Prayer is an egg. Hatch out the total helplessness inside. — Rumi

. . . the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. — Matthew Arnold

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive — Howard Thurman