Karin > Karin's Quotes

“But someone will say: “If we once recognize that we are all equally wrong, all political action will instantly be paralyzed. We can only act when we assume that we are in the right.” On the contrary, I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“Thus we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”
― Jean Rhys

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“We can walk in such a way that we arrive with each step—not walking just to get somewhere else.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life

“That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments between.”
― Maria Semple, Today Will Be Different

“And if the facts say otherwise, then the facts must be altered.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“God’s image is only fully reflected in both man and woman. When we denigrate a woman, we are in fact diminishing part of the image of God. When we exclude women, we exclude part of God. When we put women down, we tarnish the image of God. Psalm”
― Christine Caine, Unashamed: Drop the Baggage, Pick up Your Freedom, Fulfill Your Destiny

“The crusader’s voice is the voice of the crowd and must rise louder all the time, for there is, of course, the other side to be drowned out. Worse, the voices of most crowds sound alike. Worse still, the voice that seeks to do other than communicate when it makes a noise has something brutal about it; it is no longer using words as words but as something to brandish, with which to threaten, brag or condemn.”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing

“Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, through all the obstructions and the false appearances and the upsets you may have brought on yourself, to reach a meaning—using inventions of your imagination, perhaps helped out by your dreams and bits of good luck. And finally too, like Phoenix, you have to assume that what you are working in aid of is life, not death. But you would make the trip anyway—wouldn’t you?—just on hope. 1974”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing

“The word health belongs to a family of words, a listing of which will suggest how far the consideration of health must carry us: heal, whole, wholesome, hale, hallow, holy.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“This is the justice that we are learning from the ecologists: you cannot damage what you are dependent upon without damaging yourself.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“There can be no such thing as a “global village.” No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“Invariably the failure of organized religions, by which they cut themselves off from mystery and therefore from sanctity, lies in the attempt to impose an absolute division between faith and doubt, to make belief perform as knowledge; when they forbid their prophets to go into the wilderness, they lose the possibility of renewal.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“The world has room for many people who are content to live as humans, but only for a relative few intent upon living as giants or as gods.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“We are at rest now, borne along by an ancient power working constantly and tirelessly in the depths.”
― Michael Yankoski, The Sacred Year: Mapping the Soulscape of Spiritual Practice -- How Contemplating Apples, Living in a Cave, and Befriending a Dying Woman Revived My Life

“People are like plants: they grow toward the light.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“There was a shiftiness to kids who secreted themselves in a corner to read God knows what instead of what they should have been doing. Reading when you were supposed to be raking the leaves, reading when you were supposed to be sleeping, reading when you were supposed to be making the bed, not lying in it. I did everything I could to read my way out of doing anything else. It was the one thing I was good at.”
― Pamela Paul, My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues

“Books are how cautious kids get to experience a kind of secondhand rebellion, a safe way to go off the rails.”
― Pamela Paul, My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues

“Passivity isn’t the malady. It’s the symptom. Complicity is but one of your many well-honed skills. When it pleases you, you are quite practiced at defiance.”
― Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau

“Grace is just the natural loving flow of things when we allow it, instead of resisting it. Sin is any cutting or limiting of that circuit.”
― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

“This is how we build a better world: doing one tiny act of love at a time and moving on to the next small, right thing. Bit by bit, we can get the impossible job done by homing in on the small things with the small people.”
― Cindy Wang Brandt, Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness