Allison > Allison's Quotes

“The Creator is not a careless mechanic.”
― Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

“The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”
― John Updike

“The inward man is faced with a new and often dramatic task: He must come to terms with the inner tremendum. Since the God 'out there' or 'up there' is more or less dissolved in the many secular structures, the God within asks attention as never before. And just as the God outside could be experienced not only as a loving father but also as a horrible demon, the God within can be not only the source of a new creative life but also the cause of a chaotic confusion.
The greatest complaint of the Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross was that they lacked a spiritual guide to lead them along the right paths and enable them to distinguish between creative and destructive spirits. We hardly need emphasize how dangerous the experimentation with the interior life can be. Drugs as well as different concentration practices and withdrawal into the self often do more harm than good. On the other hand it also is becoming obvious that those who avoid the painful encounter with the unseen are doomed to live a supercilious, boring and superficial life.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Hate is a lack of imagination.”
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

“There is not love of life without despair about life.”
― Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Little things comfort us because little things distress us.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings

“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Nothing can be known either of God or man until God has become man in Jesus Christ.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center

“It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

“To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers