Mary E. > Mary's Quotes

“Neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible except to God alone.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“wanted to sit down in the middle of the road and stay there for the rest of my life. Whenever someone came by and said, Hey, Cecilia, what’re you doing there in the road, I’d tell them, missing people was a full-time job, being sorry about what was gone was going to take every waking minute now, so much time and energy that I had no choice but to stay right on that spot until they all decided to come back. I meant it as a joke at first, but then I looked down at the gravel and I really thought about it. I couldn’t wait for them. They weren’t coming back. I’d been trying all my life to figure out what was going on, with my mother, with all those girls that come and then go away. But now I wanted to forget. Right then I decided, as much as I’d wanted to know before, from here on out I didn’t want to know at all.”
― Ann Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars

“In meditation the work is to take the attention off yourself.”
― Laurence Freeman OSB, Sensing God: Learning to Meditate During Lent

“By the time I visited Greece, I’d heard much about Moria, a place that had amassed its own mythology, described so often as a kind of underworld. I planned to travel to Lesbos, where I’d visit the camp as a reporter. But first I’d spend some time on the mainland tourist trail with my husband, Ben, and visit the island where my ancestors once lived. We set out into Athens”
― Lauren Markham, A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging

“well-meaning efforts at communication never made things better.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“The attitude of the black camp’s commander, Lieutenant Commander Daniel Armstrong, was typical of the times. He had his men decorate the base with murals of black naval heroes throughout history, from Dorie Miller all the way back to black sailors who served with Revolutionary captain John Paul Jones. The murals were Armstrong’s way of honoring black sailors. But this same officer wouldn’t allow black recruits at Great Lakes to compete with whites for spots in special schools that trained sailors to be electricians, radiomen, and mechanics. He didn’t think they were smart enough, so he didn’t even let them try.”
― Steve Sheinkin, The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

“Was the country simply too big to govern itself? Were the regions too far apart? These were legitimate questions, going back to the founding of the republic, when many wondered”
― Ted Widmer, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington