Peter > Peter's Quotes

“If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.”
― Bill Watterson, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.”
― Criss Jami

“All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.”
― Eugene Peterson

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
― C.S. Lewis

“All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“To belittle, you have to be little.”
― Kahill Gibran, The Prophet

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”
― Anne Lamott

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
― Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“The difference between you and God is that God doesn't think He's you. ”
― Anne Lamott

“...the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there. We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. If you want to know only what you already know, you're dying. You're saying: Leave me alone; I don't mind this little rathole. It's warm and dry. Really, it's fine.

When nothing new can get in, that's death. When oxygen can't find a way in, you die. But new is scary, and new can be disappointing, and confusing - we had this all figured out, and now we don't.

New is life.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God. If you say to God, "I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You," that might be the most honest thing you've ever said. If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real-really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.

So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy eyes, like the rest of us.

Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“Guilt results from unused life, from the unlived in us.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
― Frederick Buechner

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
― Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation – Intimate Reflections on Faith, Seminary, Ministry, and Writing

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.”
― Frederick Buechner

“Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
― Frederick Buechner

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”
― Frederick Buechner

“Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it can do nothing except by consent.”
― Frederick Buechner

“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
― Thomas Merton

“A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.”
― Tullian Tchividjian