Category: VOCATION

  • There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour—put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • This morning I woke at four and lay awake for an hour or so in a bad state. It is raining again. I got up finally and went about the daily chores, waiting for the sense of doom to lift—and what did it was watering the house plants. Suddenly joy came back because I was fulfilling a simple need, a living one. Dusting never has this effect (and that may be why I am such a poor housekeeper!), but feeding the cats when they are hungry, giving Punch clean water, makes me suddenly feel calm and happy.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines.

    Journal of a Solitude
    May Sarton

  • The best way to heal yourself? Heal others.

    Bittersweet
    Susan Cain

  • But he took his belief that life wasn’t worth living and turned it on its head, asking what would make life worthwhile after all—what a single human could do to benefit humanity.

    Bittersweet
    Susan Cain

  • He was self-indulgent, a failure. He had not abandoned failure; it was his address, his street, his one comfort.

    Light Years
    James Salter

  • Therefore, you must work and ask God to be with you in what you are doing. But beware of idleness, as God does not like the sluggard… You have to plant and water then God will make the plant grow…

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II

  • “She had accepted the limitations of her life. It was this anguish, this contentment which created her grace.”

    Light Years
    James Salter

  • “As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”

    ― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

  • No accomplishment is worth it if it is done apart from the Lord.

    —Fr. David Hanna