Beth > Beth's Quotes

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.”
― Oswald Chambers

“She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said,

"You have a bad case, a very bad case."

"Of what?"

"Growing up.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Then I've been drunk, too," admitted Francie.

"On beer?"

"No. Last spring, in McCarren's Park, I saw a tulip for the first time in my life.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.”
― Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
― Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

“In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together; each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's walk have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze and our drinks are at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life — natural life — has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.

Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.

If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.

Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Love is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

“PLEGARIA

Niégate a caer.
Si no puedes negarte a caer,
niégate permanecer en el suelo,
eleva tu corazón hacia el cielo
y, como un mendigo hambriento,
suplica que te lo llenen,
y te lo llenarán.
Puede que te empujen hacia abajo.
Puede que te impidan levantarte.
Pero nadie puede impedirte
elevar tu corazón
hacia el cielo...
sólo tu.
Es justo en medio de la desdicha
cuando muchas cosas se aclaran.
El que dice que nada bueno
se ha conseguido con ello
es que aún no está prestando atención.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die