Harvest of Hope Quotes

“All of us have a hundred faces, attitudes, and facets of personality. I don't think anyone is all of one piece. We're more like the patchwork quilts I love, little bits and pieces, bright or dark, sewed together with the sometimes uneven stitches of experience.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“When our personal world is dark, we seek to fix the blame on any one of a number of factors—heredity, parents, destiny, what is known as bad luck or the bad break, and occasionally even on God.

It takes a long while to learn that sometimes we, ourselves, put out or, at least cloud over, our own sun, and that all things balance in the end. In nights of darkness we forget the shining days, though everyone experiences both.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“Look back upon winter with gratitude. Spring is the harvest of the darker months—everything you know starts to grow in darkness. Don't write and tell me that winter brought you only colds or the ubiquitous virus. Perhaps it did bring those (and to me as well). Who goes through the chilly months unscathed? But it also brought things not to be forgotten—silver moons and snow, brilliant under stars; it brought Christmas and a new year, and to each of us something happy, something unexpected, which was not another problem but a joy. For the pendulum swings; nothing is static; and the road, however long, does turn.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“The light is always there; we ourselves cause the obscurity, for we cast very long shadows: selfishness, envy, vanity, fear, unkindness—the list is endless, and we can all add to it. . . . I do not think that in this world, we can help casting shadows, but perhaps by conscious effort—through prayer and hard work—we can, during our lifetimes, shorten the shadow and increase the light.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“The path we each travel can be very dark, indeed; it can turn unexpectedly, and we can't see around corners. Most of us, I think, pray for more light upon our personal roads—not to see far ahead or to foretell the future, but to illuminate the next step, which is all we can take. No one goes along his road in seven-league boots.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“The spirit within each human being is a small fragment of the Divine and Eternal, and if we give it the opportunity to speak, it will do so—but only when we keep our engagement to dismiss everyday difficulties, be quiet, and listen.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“It seems to me that few people walk their ways with deliberation, stopping every so often to delight in the seasons and in the simple, important, enduring things. Most of those I know are either rushing about blindly, almost headlong, or inching along, looking down. Both methods of progression are, in a spiritual sense, not progression at all, but symptoms of fear.

No matter what has happened or what you fear will happen, you have to walk as though you were going somewhere—not in a hurry, not at a crawl, and certainly not running away from something toward you know not what.

It cannot be said too often, or by too many people, that the path we follow must be taken a step at a time—never on the run, and never standing still, neither going backward nor marking time. Everyone hazards a guess at the future—his own, the future of those he loves, the future of the country and the world. Statisticians often come up with some amazing suggestions; so do computers; but no one really knows. Only He know, Who created this world in all its beauty, and our small selves, with it. And it's just as well that we don't know.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope

“Late last year, I spoke to a group of young married people, all its members very perturbed about the world in which we live, about problems which, of course, might affect their private worlds. I could give them no easy answers. Having lived for a few months past sixty-eight years, and having been a professional writer for over forty of them, has not endowed me with special wisdom. I don't know any how-to-do or solve-it-yourself formulas. I know as little as these young folks about the future, and I could tell them only to bend with the wind and lean upon the spirit.”
― Faith Baldwin, Harvest of Hope