• “We spare neither labors nor means in order to teach our children secular sciences, so that they can serve well the earthly authorities. Only the knowledge of the holy Faith, the service of the Heavenly King are a matter of indifference to us. We allow them to attend spectacles but we care little whether they go to Church and stand within it reverently. We demand an account from them of what they learned in their secular institutes—why do we not demand an account from them of what they heard in the Lord’s house?”

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • Such persons are so caught up in God’s love that everything else can only receive its meaning and purpose in the context of that love. They ask only one question: “What is pleasing to the Spirit of God?” And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit in the silence and solitude of their hearts, they follow its promptings even if it upsets their friends, disrupts their environment, and confuses their admirers.

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • “Pray as if everything depends on God. Work as if everything depends on you.”

    —St. Ignatius

  • “Do not wish to assure everyone in words of your love for them, but rather ask God to show them your love without words.”

    —St. John Climacus

  • “We fear we are empty inside so we cover it up with manufactured control, or made-up excitement, or self-promotion.”

    —Ann Belford Ulanov, The Unshuttered Heart

  • If I am to follow Jesus, then I, too, must remain close to the soil. Often I look up into the clouds and daydream about a better world. But my dreams will never bear fruit unless I keep turning my eyes again and again back to the dust of this earth and listening to what God is saying to me on the road of life. For I am connected to the earth and to all who walk the earth with me.

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • “If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

    — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

  • “But if the future is not in my hands, then I have all the more reason to stay in the present.”

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • It’s not a brand that creates marketing-driven products. It has never advertised because it doesn’t need to: advertising exists to create imagined value, to imbue a product or a brand with a quality that isn’t really there. It’s a socially-acceptable and highly-lucrative form of deceit used by brands who know, innately, that its products can’t justify themselves.
    …
    Its rise has been fueled by word of mouth, or blog posts on sites such as this one. There’s no seeding, gifting of products or relying on so-called “influencers.” Instead of coercing, the brand seduces. Emphasis is entirely on the product.

    —Aleks Eror

  • We don’t come into this world separate, or belonging to a select few, but we’re a part of the human race. All of us amazingly the same in spite of our differences.

    This is the real thing. We belong to each other. We always have…

    I count it a loss if I don’t touch a life, offer a smile, a prayer, a pause along the way. So every day I continue to do this one tiny thing. This one tiny, incredible thing.

    —River Jordan, Praying for Strangers