Katrina > Katrina's Quotes

“Long ago I fell back on books as the only permanent consolers. They are the one stainless and unimpeachable achievement of the human race. It saddens me to think that I shall have to die with thousands of books unread that would have given me noble and unblemished happiness.”
― Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop

“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“We grope after the Spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of Spiritual is Real.”
― Emerson

“That ought to be our stewardship mandate, to create Edens wherever we go. That’s why humans are here. Our responsibility is to extend forgiveness into the landscape.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World

“Truly tolerant people are hard to offend.”
― Anthony M. Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture

“If you knew there was a beach where you could pick up gold nuggets like pebble stones, would you not go there? Go there.”
― Anthony M. Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture

“The lie rushes in to fill up the void left by truth in retreat. When people lose their faith in God, for example they do not then believe in nothing.... They commence believing in anything.”
― Anthony Esolen

“In the absence of biblical conviction, people will go the way of culture.”
― Sally Clarkson

“Faith by its very nature must be tried... what God does with our faith must be something like workouts. He sees it to that our faith gets mushed and pulled, stretched and pounded, taken to it's limits so its limits can expand... If it doesn't get exercised, it becomes like a weak muscle that fails us when we need it.”
― Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
― C.S. Lewis

“God will find you,” said the priest quietly. “Stay calm and do not flee from Him who has been seeking you before you even existed in your mother’s womb.”
― Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

“You seem to have an uncommon knowledge of young people. May I ask if you are, or have been, a teacher?" "Oh no!" Mrs Carey remarked with a smile, I am just a mother- that's all!”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mother Carey's Chickens

“Women are like cheese strudels. When first baked, they are crisp and fresh on the outside, but the filling is unsettled and indigestible; in age, the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling comes at last into its own.”
― Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection

“Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!”
― Agatha Christie

“The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”
― Charlotte Mason, School Education: Developing A Curriculum

“Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually: The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped. He is not only with me, but in me and I in Him.”
― Francis de Sales

“There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“You can't describe love, Kathie, and you can't define it. Only it goes with you all your life. I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty...and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn't think that sorrow could be a light would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes...I think that is what love is to a woman...a lantern in her hand.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

“The Witch's conception of what Narnia should be like is similar to what Sauron desires for Middle-earth (and what Satan desires for our own world) : a barren landscape devoid of life peopled by joyless automatons who neither laugh nor take pleasure in anything. It is Satan, not Christ who is the cosmic killjoy.”
― Louis Markos, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis

“Behind Boromir's testimony lurks something else that our modern world is desperately in need of: a sense that we live in a meaningful universe where nothing is accidental and where an overruling providence moves things forward in accordance with a higher plan. This promises as well that history is not merely a succession of unrelated events ("one darn thing after another"), but that it too is imbued with meaning, purpose, and direction. And if both the universe and history are meaningful, then perhaps we are as well.”
― Louis Markos, On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis

“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Maybe the world is waiting for you to give yourself to it. Maybe it's only then that things can work themselves out.”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

“The room of love is another world. You go there wearing no watch, watching no clock. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than world on world, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together. You come together to the day's end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. You take it all in your arms, it goes away, and there you are where giving and taking are the same, and you live a little while entirely in a gift. The words have all been said, all permissions given, and you free in the place that is the two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room?”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

“The big idea of education, from first to last, is the idea of a better place. Not a better place where you are, because you want it to be better and have been to school and learned to make it better, but a better place somewhere else. In order to move up, you have got to move on.”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

“Living right on called for nothing out of the ordinary. We made no changes. We only accepted the changes as they came.”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter