On Life:
"Visualize the most amazing life imaginable to you. Close your eyes and see it clearly, then hold the vision for as long as you can. Now place the vision in God's hands...and consider it done." ~Marianne Williamson
"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influences of each." ~Henry David Thoreau
"I am not afraid of storms for I'm learning how to sail my ship." ~Louisa May Alcott
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. 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."
~Ranier Maria Rilke
On Solitude:
"Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it." ~Thomas Merton
“It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.” ~Thomas Merton
On Gratitude:
“Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted–a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.” ~ Rabbi Harold Kushner
“Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more.” ~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
On Love:
Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live.
~Robert Southwell
"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion -
I have shudder'd at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr'd for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you."
~John Keats
On Peace:
“Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is.”
~Amy Carmichael
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