the one thing that you cannot enhance, supercharge, or outsource in human life is the one thing we most need: the patient process of search and recognition, absence and return, rupture and repair that adds up to being known.
“These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered, gleaming in the sunshine among the snowdust quivering in the air, while the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted out of a little window as the loaves were put out. All this together was so extraordinarily wonderful that Levin burst out laughing and crying for joy.”
― Anna Karenina
― Anna Karenina
“You have to give to receive. You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. You have to conquer your desire to get what you crave. Success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride. Failure leads to the greatest success, which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself.”
― The Road to Character
― The Road to Character
“It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don't know at all that it is the same with others.”
― A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph
― A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
―
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“To believe with certainty, somebody said, one has to begin by doubting.”
― A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph
― A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph
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