Kiley > Kiley's Quotes

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”
― George MacDonald

“Doing the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.”
― George MacDonald

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

“You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity)”
― George MacDonald

“What do you love more?” she teased. “My hair or my heart?” “Why give me only two choices? Don’t leave out your legs, your laugh, the way you bite your lip when you’re thinking, the feel of your breath on my face, the sound of your voice in the morning, the way you taste, the three freckles on your nose, the fan of your eyelashes, the caring spirit, the determined soul — so why stop at your hair and your heart? How do you expect me to choose? When what I love the most about you — is you.”
― Rachel Van Dyken, Ruin

“Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.”
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“She wonders how much space a person has left in her soul to change herself, once she gets older. What people does she still have to meet, what will they see in her, and what will they make her see in herself?”
― Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

“You’re never quite alone when you can stand on a balcony—you have all the cars and houses and the people in the streets. You’re among them, but also not. That’s the best thing about balconies.”
― Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

“She has not run down the stairs like this since she was a teenager, when your heart reaches the front door before your feet.”
― Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

“But in the end all he can manage to utter is: “I want you to know, Britt-Marie, that every time there’s a knock on my front door, I hope it’s you.”
― Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

“Would have. Could have. Should have. This is the language of condemnation underscored by the passivity of regret. It’s a dead language. The thing is, you can’t un-sin. You can only repent.”
― Steven Furtick, Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others

“The goal of faith isn't to take away your fears but to leverage those fears to create bolder belief. Faith leads you past your fears and reassures you of God's presence. And after a while, you begin to trust that God is going to lift you above the waves this time just like he did last time.”
― Steven Furtick, Sun Stand Still: What Happens When You Dare to Ask God for the Impossible

“If we have the audacity to ask, God has the ability to perform.”
― Steven Furtick, Sun Stand Still: What Happens When You Dare to Ask God for the Impossible

“Maybe God wants to do something beyond your abilities, and he is far less intimidated by your failures and limits than you are.”
― Steven Furtick, (Un)Qualified: How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things

“Before you were born—before any of your defects were apparent to you—they were absolutely apparent to God. That didn’t stop Him from calling your name and setting you apart. He placed you on the earth at a certain time for a pre-decided purpose.”
― Steven Furtick, Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others

“What if there is no one else on the planet who can express the thing that’s trying to be expressed through you? What if this is your one shot, and you don’t have much time left? The thing in you that wants to be expressed can never be expressed through anyone else.”
― Allison Fallon, The Power of Writing It Down: A Simple Habit to Unlock Your Brain and Reimagine Your Life

“I want to be with people who are humble and hungry, have healthy relationships, and are working to create new and better realities in the world.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“The most frightening thing he said to me was this: “Don, you’d be surprised at how easy it is to convince the American people that a perfectly good man is a demon.” I’ll add this to the mix too: I believe God is a fan of people connecting and I think the enemy of God is a fan of people breaking off into paranoid tribes. And I think all the clanging pots and pans in the kitchen to scare people from the territory we feel compelled to defend is playing into the hands of dark forces. I think a lot of the shame-based religious and political methodology has more to do with keeping people contained than with setting them free. And I’m no fan of it.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“NOT LONG AGO I WAS READING A PASSAGE IN THE Bible in which Jesus was praying for his disciples. He prayed that they would love each other, as he’d taught them to do. He prayed that they’d embrace a mission to teach other people to create communities that loved each other, as they’d experienced with him. When I read the passage, though, I saw it differently. He wasn’t just calling them into a life of sacrifice. He was calling them into a life of meaning, even the kind of meaning that would involve suffering. Suffering for a redemptive reason is hardly suffering, after all.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“To remind myself to never go back to being careful, I made a list of new freedoms. It looked like this:

I am willing to sound dumb
I am willing to be wrong
I am willing to be passionate about something that isn't perceived as cool
I am willing to express a theory
I am willing to admit I'm afraid
I am willing to contradict something I've said before
I'm willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one
I am willing to apologize
I'm perfectly willing to be perfectly human.

The whole experience makes me wonder if the time we spend trying to become somebody people will love isn't wasted because the most powerful, most attractive person we can be, is who we already are; an ever-changing being that is becoming, and will never arrive, but has opinions about what is seen along the journey.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“90 percent of people's problems could be prevented if they'd choose healthier people to give their hearts to.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“It’s true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we’re honest with each other, we can’t connect. We can’t be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person’s heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“What goes on in the other person’s soul is none of your business. All you’re responsible for is your soul, nobody else’s.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“To me, it was a human story about what it costs to be yourself, and the reward too. It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person. Having integrity is about being the same person on the inside that we are on the outside, and if we don’t have integrity, life becomes exhausting. I wonder how many people get tempted by the gains they can make by playing a role, only to pay for those temptations in public isolation.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don,” she said. “Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that’s a powerful thing.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“He was never angry when she made mistakes. He complimented and encouraged her. He shared his own mishaps with a sense of humor that made her less annoyed with her own incompetence. He gave her hope that she could learn, and pride when she did.”
― Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love

“Love cleanses, beloved. It doesn’t beat you down. It doesn’t cast blame.”
― Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love

“Michael sat down behind her. He put his strong legs on either side of her and pulled her back against him. “Just wait.” She wanted to resist his embrace, but she was too cold to fight him. “For what?” He put his arms around her. “For morning.” “I could have waited for that in the cabin.” He laughed against her hair. Lifting it, he kissed the nape of her neck. “You can’t understand until you see it from here.” He nuzzled the soft skin beneath her ear. She shivered softly. “Sleep a while if you want.” He tucked her more closely against him. “I’ll wake you at the right time.” She wasn’t sleepy after the long walk. “Do you do this sort of thing often?” “Not often enough.”
― Francine Rivers, Redeeming Love