Beate > Beate's Quotes

“One of the most pusillanimous things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to have allowed the male sex to assume that mankind is masculine.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season

“In the second place, we are women, we belong to the constructive sex, whose whole instinct is to reserve and to foster life, to build homes in every land. In the hands of women, of wives and mothers, and I will even dare to say of sisters, daughters and spinster aunts, the health and happiness of mankind very largely is laid. Those two things, the unity of the land, the unity of our common womanhood, speak a universal language.”
― Julie Summers, Home Fires: The Story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War

“My mother was like sand. The kind that warms you on a beach when you come shivering out of the cold water. The kind that clings to your body, leaving its impression on your skin to remind you where you’ve been and where you’ve come from. The kind you keep finding in your shoes and your pockets long after you’ve left the beach. She was also like the sand that archaeologists dig through. Layers and layers of sand that have kept dinosaur bones together for millions of years. And as hot and dusty and plain as that sand might be, those archaeologists are grateful for it, because without it to keep the bones in place, everything would scatter. Everything would fall apart.”
― Clare Vanderpool, Navigating Early

“The Enneagram and its origins have a storied history, to be sure. But it is also a time-tested universal theory of human nature that stands to offer us treasured insights about ourselves: why we do what we do, what God created us for, and how to bridge the gap between.”
― Christopher L. Heuertz, The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth

“In this great fiat of the little girl Mary, the strength and foundation of our life of contemplation is grounded, for it means absolute trust in God, trust which will not set us free from suffering but will set us free from anxiety, hesitation, and above all from the fear of suffering. Trust which makes us willing to be what God wants us to be, however great or however little that may prove. Trust which accepts God as illimitable Love.”
― Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God: A New Edition of a Spiritual Classic

“Strength comes in making space, in trusting yourself, in truly believing that God is good and that He has only astonishing things in mind for you.”
― Simone Troisi, Chiara Corbella Petrillo

“logotherapy, in comparison with psychoanalysis, is a method less retrospective and less introspective. Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“The writer of fiction—and I include in this all the works of the imagination, poetry, plays, realistic novels, fantasy—may never tell; he must show, and show through the five senses. “Describe this room in which we’re sitting,” I say, “and make use of all five of your senses. Don’t tell us. Show us.” The beginning writer finds this difficult. I have to repeat and repeat: fiction is built upon the concrete. A news article is essentially transitory and may be built upon sand. The house of fiction must be built upon rock. Feel, smell, taste, hear, see: show it. Dante says: “You cannot understand what I write unless you understand it in a fourfold way: on the literal level, the moral level, the allegorical level, and the anagogical level.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, and Two-Part Invention

“Arnold was very clever,” she said at last. “He saw how unsettled the world was—everything slipping downhill. He was sure there was going to be another war. Sometimes I almost feel glad he didn’t live to see it. He said things were going from bad to worse and he was quite right, of course . . . but it doesn’t help to be miserable; it doesn’t make things right to keep on grieving over them. It clouds the sun, that’s all.”
― D.E. Stevenson, Vittoria Cottage

“Creation moves and astonishes if you let it. When I realize how unlikely it is that anything at all should live on this world spun together from dust and hot gases, that creatures of almost infinite variety should at night look up at the stars, I know that it’s all more fragile than it appears, and I think maybe the only thing that keeps the Earth alive and turning is our love for it.”
― Dean Koontz, The City

“Observation is the basis of the Montessori approach. As part of my Montessori training, we observed babies and young children for 250+ hours.”
― Simone Davies, The Montessori Toddler: A Parent's Guide to Raising a Curious and Responsible Human Being

“Because we first recognized dyslexia as a learning disorder rather than a learning or processing style, we’ve paid little attention to whether dyslexic processing might also create talents and abilities.”
― Brock L. Eide, The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain

“I am going to talk to you three times a week from a country that is fighting for its life. Inevitably I’m going to get called by that terrifying word “propagandist.” But of course I’m a propagandist. Passionately I want my ideas—our ideas—of freedom and justice to survive. Vernon Bartlett, May 28, 1940, during the inaugural broadcast of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s North American Service”
― Jacqueline Winspear, The American Agent

“The genuine mark of the Church is her exousia— the power, the fullness of power, given her to utter the words of salvation and to perform the acts of salvation that men need, but cannot provide for themselves. No one can appropriate to himself the I of Christ or of God. Yet it is with this I that the priest speaks when he says, “This is my body”, or when he says, “I forgive you your sins.” It is not the priest who absolves us from our sins—that would have little value; no, it is God who absolves us, and that, of course, changes everything. But what an awesome privilege it is that a man is permitted to take into his mouth the I of God. He can do it only by virtue of that fullness of power that the Lord has given his Church and without which he is just a social worker, nothing more.”
― Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“Humanity needs mercy and compassion. Pius XII, more than half a century ago, said that the tragedy of our age was that it had lost its sense of sin, the awareness of sin. Today we add further to the tragedy by considering our illness, our sins, to be incurable, things that cannot be healed or forgiven. We lack the actual concrete experience of mercy. The fragility of our era is this, too: we don’t believe that there is a chance for redemption; for a hand to raise you up; for an embrace to save you, forgive you, pick you up, flood you with infinite, patient, indulgent love; to put you back on your feet. We need mercy.”
― Pope Francis, The Name of God Is Mercy

“What we can and must do is undertake the construction of an environment that will provide the proper conditions for his normal development. The child's psychic energy, once awakened, will develop according to its own laws and have an effect on us as well. The mere contact with a human being developing in this way can renew our own energies. The child developing harmoniously and the adult improving himself at his side make a very exciting and attractive picture. This is the treasure we need today—helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself and receiving in return his gifts of hope and light. In this new picture, the adult will appear not only as the builder of the external world, but, even more importantly, as the protector of the moral and spiritual forces that appear anew in every human being born. —Montessori, Education and Peace”
― Susan Mayclin Stephenson, The Red Corolla: Montessori Cosmic Education

“Midrash is not some private, original, subjective, “creative” interpretation. It is not an exegesis, or “reading into the text” of one’s own thoughts, but it is an attempt at exegesis, or “reading out of the text” what is there already; an “unpacking” of the gift of many-layered spiritual riches that lie there. Midrash is not scientific scholarship, or the historical-critical method of understanding a text by what we know of its history and the culture that produced it, although it does not contradict that method. Nor is midrash a reductionistic, debunking “deconstruction.” It is faithful, not skeptical; it assumes that God knew exactly what he was doing when he inspired each part of it, and it lingers lovingly over each word out of respect for the divine economy of words. It assumes that there is always more, not less, in the text than we see. It is neither a fundamentalistic literalism nor a “liberal” or “modernist” allegorizing-away of the literal meaning, but a kind of probing or deep-sea diving. It assumes that Scripture, like the sea, is vast and deep and rewarding on many levels. One of its methods is to interpret Scripture by Scripture, to shed light on one passage by using others. It also respects and uses the traditional wisdom of past saints and mystics.”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle C)

“The cathedrals were not financed by taxes, on the poor or on the rich. They were financed by gifts, from rich and poor alike. They were not built at the expense of the poor; they were built by the poor, by the peasants who worked on them, and by their gifts. And the cathedrals were also built for the poor, who usually love them more than the rich do. (The rich build banks; the poor build cathedrals. We build what we love.)”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle A)

“That divine presence explains the joy the Jews felt so passionately when they went to their temple and which we find expressed in their Psalms. If we don’t have as much joy in our churches as they had, it can only be because we don’t have as much faith and love toward that divine presence as they had. And yet we have the presence of the same God in an even more complete and more concrete form in Christ, who is God incarnate, fully divine and fully human.”
― Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings (Cycle A)

“January 24 At the center of the canon of the Mass is the account of what took place on the eve of Jesus’ Passion and death. When the priest speaks the words of the canon, he is not telling a story from the past, a mere recollection of an earlier time; he is telling what is actually taking place in the present. “This is my Body”; that is being said in the here-and-now. But these are the words of Jesus Christ. No mere human can say them.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“But the mortification of the threefold concupiscence is not just for monks, nuns, and priests. According to our state in life, all of us have to overcome this temptation to sin. Our traditional Lenten disciplines (prayer, fasting, almsgiving) are intended to help us in this. Fasting mortifies lust of the flesh. Almsgiving mortifies lust of the eyes (greed, avarice). And prayer mortifies pride by acknowledging our dependence on God (“Give us our daily bread.” [Matt 6:11 GW]) and submitting our will to his (“Thy will be done” [6:10]). Let’s unite our efforts to Jesus’s powerful work of redemption by faith and let his Spirit work in us this Lent through the means our Lenten disciplines.”
― John Bergsma, The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A

“The child has his own hungers and thirsts for God that have not historically been recognized, much less appreciated. In a profound gesture of humility, the scholar of theology (Cavalletti) and the master educator (Gobbi) chose to follow the child rather than impose preconceived ideas of what a child should think, say, or feel about God. Fifty years before the 2020 Directory drew attention to the fact, these women recognized that children “have the capacity to pose meaningful questions relative to creation, to God’s identity, to the reason for good and evil, and are capable of rejoicing before the mystery of life and love” (DC, 236).”
― Sister Mary Michael Fox, Following God's Pedagogy: Principles for Children's Catechesis

“embrace the body language you want. If you are sad, smile. Scared? Open yourself up. The real emotions often follow, and the world responds in kind.”
― Lauren Parvizi, La Vie, According to Rose

“the primary social goal of children (and adults) was to belong and feel significant within their family or social group. Although they are not always conscious of this goal, children constantly adjust their behavior to achieve a sense of belonging (connection) and significance (responsibility and capability).”
― Jane Nelsen, Positive Discipline in the Montessori Classroom: Preparing an Environment that Fosters Respect, Kindness & Responsibility

“Of all the catechetical approaches I’ve seen, none provide God with as much opportunity to work as the CGS approach affords. The material content of the CGS is God’s Word and the Church’s liturgy. The proclamation of this content is limited to only what is essential, providing time and silence for the child to converse with God. Even the posture taken by the catechist while giving a presentation — often sitting next to the child, instead of across from the child or standing above the child — communicates that it is God who is teaching and that both catechist and child are invited to listen to his voice.”
― Sister Mary Michael Fox, Following God's Pedagogy: Principles for Children's Catechesis

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“Kolbe lived from and for Jesus. He could do this because he heard in Scripture the voice of a living Person. He heard Jesus as a living Person because he experienced him as a living Person; he could touch him in the Blessed Sacrament in which he forms a Church and is present for us. Sacrament and Scripture together made it possible for Kolbe to experience the one living Christ. Like Francis and Bonaventure, he was convinced that to look upon Christ is to look, not backward, but forward. We do not go forward when we heap up more and more possessions around us; we go forward when we become more ready for God, more ready for love.”
― Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year

“[C]atechesis with children is the “joyful contemplation” of the action of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the children whom the Spirit loves; as such, it is the respectful attentiveness to the ways that nourish their growth, so that the dialogue between the Spirit and the bride [the child] not be disturbed.48”
― Sister Mary Michael Fox, Following God's Pedagogy: Principles for Children's Catechesis

“the child has a particular way of receiving the Gospel that is in accordance with her very nature, and we must be willing to recognize and appreciate that way.”
― Sister Mary Michael Fox, Following God's Pedagogy: Principles for Children's Catechesis

“A greater understanding of the needs of the child in the psychic sphere can aid us in understanding and respecting the needs of the child in the religious sphere. To know, at least to some degree, the true nature of the child means to help the child in ways that will allow him or her to develop as an integrated or “whole” person, one who is in right relationship with self, with God, and with others.8”
― Sister Mary Michael Fox, Following God's Pedagogy: Principles for Children's Catechesis